Clash of the Elements Part 4: Travels of the Overlord
by mewmaster93
Summary: The Chaos Emeralds, jewels containing the ultimate power, are being sought out by the recently revived Joe Dark. But a failure leads to a greater power source which will put him in conflict with Sonic and his friends. And this is only the prologue to a greater journey...For a later confrontation with the Dark King's greatest threat will lead to the birth of a new hero and quest...
1. Chapter 1

"Hmm…" _Have you ever heard of an island that exists so high up into the sky that it is said to touch the edge of the heavens itself? _"Another day goes by, and once again no one has disturbed the island or the Master Emerald…" _It is a glorious place where many types of environments are said to co-exist peaceful in close proximity to one another, from the fiery mountains to the tropical forests and the mystical ruins, to the icy caps and the underwater cities…_ "Heh, look at me, talking as if I actually want someone to start causing trouble around here." _On this island, seven powerful objects of grand majesty called the Chaos Emeralds were created, alongside the jewel of near infinite might that unifies their power together, the Master Emerald._ "Still, I suppose it would break the mood up here if someone tried to take the Master Emerald…"

_No one knows just what created the Emeralds, if they were crafted by ancient tribes or brought forth from a mysterious if unknown dimension, but nearly everyone on this world and even a few beyond know of the might that these Emeralds are capable of wielding. _"No, even if no one is trying to take the Master Emerald right now, something could happen to change that at any time…" _But no one knows of the Emeralds powers more then its guardian, a red echidna with white gloves who fittingly went by the name of Knuckles due to his style of combat. Ever since he was born, he has stayed dedicated to his goal of protecting Angel Island from the forces of evil…It was a job that he shared with only himself, for he was the last of his kind. _

"Yawn…" The red echidna stretched his arms over his dreadlocked head and smacked his lips a couple times after better expressing the tiredness his body is feeling due to how long he had been sitting around for the past few days. Once he hears his right arm bones cracking, Knuckles lowers his arms and rests his palms against the broken ground on both sides of his body and looks towards the starry sky with his dark purple eyes. As he saw a single star crossing the sky like a streak of lightning, the echidna is reminded of one of his friends from the surface world. Murmuring to himself without releasing any words, Knuckles lowered his head and thought to himself "I wonder what Sonic is up to these days…"

As the images of a blue hedgehog with a go-to attitude and a love of adventure flashed by in his mind, Knuckles chuckles and glances over his shoulder to look at the glowing Emeralds as the circle around in place above the seven pillars surrounding the altar where the larger, dark green Master Emerald resides on top of. "Even though we may not see eye to eye a lot of the time, I do owe a lot to Sonic…After all, I wouldn't be sitting on this island here tonight if he didn't stop Chaos. And in the end, even though I've been doing this job since as far back as I can remember, I will not curse my fate." Knuckles turned around and looked back towards the sky, and with a look of irritation on his face he lowered his eyelids and said to himself "Of course, I won't exactly be able to keep up duties if I fall asleep…I guess I'll go take a brief walk over to the Lava Reef Zone and get my blood flowing again…"

After lifting his stiff body up in full and spreading his knuckles out in front of his chest until they release a cracking sound, Knuckles flinches in place and thrusts his eyelids open for a moment so he can look up into the starry skies above. Something felt incredibly off, even if it just went by as quickly as a heart pulse. It was especially concerning how a couple of the stars seem to have vanished, which even the sometimes dim-witted echidna realized was a bad omen of things to come. Upon lowering his arms beside his body, Knuckles glanced towards the sky with one eye and reminded himself "…A brief walk…That's it." And began to depart from the shrine of the Master Emerald. If anything happened while he was gone, he would know right away and return to protect it from harm…But the thing about this night that the poor Echidna was unaware of, was that the person coming to this planet was someone the likes of which he will never face again…

**Clash of the Elements Part 4: Travels of the Overlord**

**Prologue Chapter 1: The Scepter of Darkness**

_Many thousands of years ago, a lone figure sits on top of a smooth, slanted rock out in the middle of nowhere. He is contemplating something, but the complexity of his thoughts are a mystery to even those who are closest to him. His chin is resting on top of the backside of his hands, and he is looking straight on ahead through the thin streams of dust being blown across the wastelands. His dark red eyes are unaffected by the actions of nature around him, simply because in his heart he knew that the grains were being purposely directed in such a manner by the man that was approaching him from the sky away from his stagnant gaze. "Elemental Overlord…What brings you out here today?" The man clad in black who was given the title of the Dark King says with slight annoyance at the disruption of his natural period solitude as he shifts his body upward and rustles his hands around to break the stiffness in his muscles._

_The other figure, a simple man wearing civilian clothes that were so plain in appearance that were it not for his reputation would deceive you into believing that he was no one worth your time to take notice of. The Elemental Overlord, as he is so called, places his hands into his pant pockets and looks at the crimson caped backside of the Dark King while the man brushes off the few grains of dust that had become deeply attached to his smooth onyx gauntlets and says in a casual, conversational tone of voice "I was going to ask a similar question. You've been gone for a few days, and it was rather worrisome considering no one had seen eye or ear of you." "Hmph, I'm sure my second-in-command knew where I was going, but it doesn't surprise me that he would neglect to mention it to anyone…But if you must know, I've just been thinking about life. Nothing more, nothing less…"_

"…_You were thinking about how we haven't been able to converse with each other as much lately because of our separate goals, haven't you?" The Elemental Overlord, after a few moments of silence, took a gander at trying to figure out what was on his opposite's mind, and with a glance over his shoulders the man looked down at his shorter company and nodded his head. "I much preferred the time in our life before we had to ensure balance on the other worlds…At least then we were able to help each other understand our powers without worrying about the safety of anyone besides our own people. But as of now it appears as though…" "Do not worry about it, I actually voiced my concerns towards the higher-ups." _

_Though the Elemental Overlord was trying to diffuse the problem plaguing his antithesis' mind, the mere mention of the higher-ups caused the Dark King to grimace out of view of the Overlord's eyes. "…Go on" Is what he said though in slight annoyance. "I want you to come with me to some of the other planets in the universe. We are merely going to observe the activities going on in each world, be neutral visitors if possible. I believe its time for us to see the universe beyond our natural roles. So we will be taking a trip of sorts, with no interfering no matter how much we wish to do so…" The Elemental Overlord holds his right hand out in front of him as the Dark King turns around to face him, and with a smile on his face he says "So what do you say? Are you with me?"_

"…" "Hey, shadow, are you with me here still?" In the present day, the phantasmal spirit of the Dark King opens its ethereal eyes as the barely caring words of his host reach his spiritual ears with impeccable timing. The body he inhabits is that of a human boy roughly thirteen years of age, with a brown sleeveless shirt that bore a skull and crossbones on the front of his chest and a roughed up pair of blue jeans wrapped around his legs that had a small chain connected to the lip of his front and back right pockets acting as his wardrobe alongside the normal tennis shoes on his feet. His body is turned with his arms floating out beside him and his red eyes glaring straight at the spirit through the front of his slick black hair, which is combed over his head to perfectly conform to his scalp while also keeping the strands of hair around the rest of his face above his neck.

"Hmmm?" The Dark King's spirit says with pause as he wonders just why his host body, who goes by the name of Joe Dark, has stopped his advance throughout the endless depths of space. It took him a moment to realize that he been caught in the warm grip of nostalgia, and with a surprisingly graceful nod of his head the Dark King apologized to the boy for his sudden mental and emotional slip-up. Naturally, considering past behavior, Joe Dark was surprised by how the spirit acted just now and seeing how amiss his actions were he brought it upon himself to ask "What were you thinking about?" He turned his back towards the depths of space and leaned in that direction while folding his arms in front of his chest and maintaining a rather decent pace of flight considering where they were at now. "I was reminded of the first time me and the Elemental Overlord truly went out and experienced the universe beyond the roles we had been assigned by the celestial beings above…It is quite odd that I would be thinking of one of my fonder memories considering my hatred towards the Elemental Overlord, but at the same time I bear no ill-well towards myself for thinking them."

"I see…" And despite how much he loathed the Dark King for inhabiting his body still, Joe Dark didn't mind listening in to what the shadow had to say, especially since for the last few months this was the only company he had with him. Besides, in a way, he understood where the Dark King was coming from in what he said. "Ahem…Anyways, forgive me for stalling you, especially since we have not much longer left to go." The spirit tried to swiftly push the conversation under the rug and forget all about it, and though this disappointed Joe Dark slightly as seen by the look in his eyes he decided not to pursue the matter any further and after resuming his normal position and turning back around the boy kept moving forward through space.

"By the way, how have I been able to breathe in space all this time?" Joe Dark asks something that has been on his mind since the beginning, but he only chose to ask now since the Dark King was feeling more talkative then usual. "Because space is somewhat of an extension of darkness. Those who bask in darkness' might can ignore most of the laws of space such as the lack of oxygen and the pull of gravity if they so wish…Until they fully enter the atmosphere of a planet, at which point they have to conform to the rules established there." "And what exactly are the rules for this planet that we are going to?" Joe Dark asks with a rather piqued sense of curiosity. "You are asking the wrong person here. For all we know, anything can happen…I've heard instances of certain people flying to these type of worlds through space and having their powers dampened, their bodies transformed, or their memories erased entirely."

"Oh…" The boy, especially upon hearing that last one, muttered that single word out of concern for his own life. "Do not fear…If worse comes to worse I will make sure to salvage your memories." The Dark King made certain to reassure his host body after quickly and correctly guessing what was troubling his mind. "For now though…We have arrived…" Cutting the topic off for the time being, the two beings look on ahead to see a blue and green planet floating amidst the depths of space. "Wait a second…This is the planet Earth. You brought me back to my home world to find the seven Chaos Emeralds?!" Understandably furious at the Dark King for but a brief moment, it takes a few words of explanation from the spirit to calm his host body before he acted out irrationally "Relax yourself, Joe Dark…Its really quite simple to explain."

"This is Earth, yes, but rather then it being the one you are familiar with it is an alternate one that exists in the same universe but has taken a different path as far as its history is concerned." Though that explanation barely made much sense when Joe Dark tried to think about it for too long, as evidenced by the twitching in his eyes and the frustration in his scowl, he tried to understand the basic elements of it and quickly turned and shook his head back and forth before saying with gruff irritation in his tone of voice "Gah, whatever! How can you even tell that this is the Earth we are looking for if that's the case?" "Those of us connected to the higher-ups, even when we have been tethered between life and death, are able to perceive which heroes and villains exist on each world, along with whatever celestial objects that have been gifted to them if need be…"

"So the Chaos Emeralds you spoke of ARE there?" Joe Dark asked just to get some genuine confirmation instead of the vague explanations he has been receiving thus far. "Hehehe…" After a chilling laugh and grin that only the Dark King knew the meaning behind, he said to his host body "Yes, they are. I'll guide you to the island where they are resting at this very moment, just enter slowly through the atmosphere and then descend at my command…" "Very well, shadow…" The two beings move towards the luscious planet, their bodies going down through the atmospheric layers without burning up due to the forces of gravity not yet affecting them. It is only once they make it past the clouds that they are forced to conform to the natural laws of the universe, and Joe Dark in particular feels the effects near instantly as his eardrums start popping from the change in atmospheric pressure.

"Gah!" The boy expresses his disdain towards the sensation with a swift bout of fury and a light placing of his hands against his ears to try and get it all to stop as he descends further towards the planet's surface. "Its not fun, is it?" The Dark King says out of empathy towards his host body's pain. Of course, considering how hard Joe Dark is trying to avoid the pain by holding his hands against his head, he fails to hear the deep voice of his following spirit, which means that he had to repeat the question through the mind with a bit of annoyance in his tone. "No, it really, really isn't!" Joe Dark replies in brute irritation as his eyelids are thrust open and he starts lightly gritting his teeth in agony. "Bear with it for just a little longer, and look down in front of you…"

Joe Dark tries to focus through the pain at the Dark King's behest and notices an island floating amidst the clouds high above the briny sea below. There is a mass thicket of trees around the island, along with three ice-tipped mountains at the center that poke up high above the rest of the environment. Below the island is an amazingly massive quantity of brown rock that has water slowly dripping out from a few crevices and into the sea. But there was one particular part of the island visible from this point that caught Joe Dark's attention. It was a archaic shrine with moss covered, broken pillars and a two tier altar where a rather bright green sparkle can be seen glowing at the center of it all. This part of the island appeared to be separate from everything else, its only connection proving to be a lanky bridge far away on the western side of the altar.

Caring not about the minor details of the island after another brief glance, Joe Dark simply grinned merrily at the fact that he would soon be more powerful than the one whose life he was trying to end. He didn't even worry about the pain so much anymore as he pulled his hands away from his head and slowly descended towards the altar. His anticipation was palpable, and as he widened his eyes and licked the edge of his lips with the tip of his tongue the Dark King couldn't help but feel happy himself over the fact that his host body was so dedicated to his task. "Now be careful…If I recall correctly, someone on this world guards the Emeralds, and we wouldn't want to attract attention when you are still rather weak…" "Bah, I don't care about some guardian. Back on Plit I beat that world's strongest heroes when I was at my weakest state, so what should I have to worry about from this world?!"

Joe Dark made a strong rebuttal to the Dark King's warning, which in turn caused the spirit to make one of his own by reminding him "Don't forget, it was your very underestimation of what those heroes were capable of that got you killed the last time. And if you die again, I will not spare even a single effort towards reviving you." Glancing over his shoulder to scowl at the spirit for doubting his capabilities, especially towards his ability to learn from his mistakes, Joe Dark then looked back towards the island as it grew ever bigger and the central green glow was joined by a ring made up of seven different colored lights around it. He went towards the more prominent light, noticing swiftly how the other lights came from seven perfectly levitating jewels on the pillars surrounding its more powerful "brother".

"Here they are…" Joe Dark says, firmly recognizing the Chaos Emeralds for what they were along with the Master Emerald in the center of it and widened his grin slightly as he stops momentarily above the top of the Master Emerald and turns himself around to get a better vantage point of everything around him before he lands on the mythical jewel. "Interesting…" The boy could feel the immense power exuding from the Master Emerald without even so much as trying to detect it. It was so powerful that if the energy would be manifested into a physical form Joe Dark figured that the size of said being would be immeasurable, which was both worrisome yet at the same time exhilarating to think about as he stood on top of it and his body quivered in eager anticipation. "Don't get any ideas about absorbing power from the Master Emerald, boy…"

"Hmmm?" Joe Dark asked out of curiosity for the Dark King's grim warning. "The Master Emerald represents unification, which means its energies are incredibly pure…You'll burn if you try to pull the energy straight from there. Just follow my cues and you should be able to absorb the negative energy of the more limited Chaos Emeralds…" The Dark King floats straight above his host body as he stretches his arms out above his head and closes his eyelids tightly. He sniffs the air, catching a slight whiff of the power surrounding him and laugh gently in ecstasy before furthering the reach of his arms and increasing the volume of his laughter and insanity tenfold for a few seconds until he realizes that something is amiss with the process that should be making him more powerful.

He lowers his head and with his arms still stiff in the air he arches his eyebrows in confusion and says to the spirit above him "What is going on here? I don't feel any stronger…" Joe Dark tries to keep his temper in check for the time being as he looks up slightly at the Dark King's spirit as he floats around the altar and looks at each Chaos Emerald up close. "…Impossible." The disbelief of the wandering spirit causes Joe Dark to flinch in irritation as he slowly lowers his arms and snaps his fingers at the Dark King to grab his attention "Hey! What do you mean by 'Impossible'?!" He knew bad news would be the only thing reaching his ears, which is why he was growing angrier prematurely. "…It shouldn't be possible, but the negative energy in the Chaos Emeralds is no longer here!"

The Dark King was utterly confused by this development, which was a far cry from the usual where he appeared to be in control of most situations with his knowledge of how other worlds worked. "…Are you kidding me?" Joe Dark said after folding his arms in front of his chest and taking in a deep breath through the nostrils. But it was just a calm before the mighty storm of rage that the boy was about to unleashed upon the Dark King's spirit. With a thrust of both of his arms out in front of his body and an angered glare in his eyes Joe Dark turned towards the shadowy being and yells out while his black and crimson aura flares up to dangerous extremes around him "YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT I SPENT MONTHS TRAVELING ACROSS THE COSMOS TO SEEK OUT A WAY TO RESTORE MY LOST POWER AND THEN SOME, AND NOW THESE CHAOS EMERALDS DON'T HAVE THE NEGATIVE ENERGY I NEED?!"

Joe Dark leaps forward and launches himself at the Dark King's spirit. With his aura taking the shape of a set of talons he holds them uncomfortably close to the shadowy being with his eyes slowly becoming blank red with utter madness as he looks straight into the Dark King's own slightly tense glare and mutters in a tone of quiet that it is almost unnaturally disturbing "You better have some sort of alternative up your ethereal sleeve, or I'll send you back to Hell without a second thought…" Even though the Dark King knew that his body had naught the power nor the ability to go through with his claim, the sheer intensity of anger exuding from his blackened aura caused the spirit to tremble slightly in fear as he shook his eyes around and tried to bring forth a solution to the current problem.

It was then that he sensed something amiss in the area behind him. It wasn't an unnatural feeling that one would expect to sense when mass quantities of darkness was about, but it rather he felt as though the force he was sensing was not meant to exist in this world. Whatever the case may have been, as he turned away from the angered glare of his host body and floated forward he peered towards the closest mountain face beyond the bridge and sensed darkness seeping out from around a gateway shaped crack in the rocks. "…Interesting…" He murmured, while Joe Dark growled out in disgust "What is it, you nuance of a shadow?" "Follow me, I may have found something…"

The Dark King's spirit edged forward as far as he could beyond the constraints of his host, and Joe Dark followed behind not long after with his aura deflating and his eyes returning back to their normal shade while his eyebrows stayed arched slightly out of caution towards the actions of the malicious spirit that he flies right behind. Eventually, when the Dark King arrives at the rock face where the gate lies, he moves off to the side and tells his host body of what he saw. Caring not about finding a switch to open the way, Joe Dark simply raises his right hand into the air and channels his aura into a condensed sphere of energy that is thrust out from the palm and struck against the center of the rock. It is immediately blown to smithereens upon impact, with only a few rough chunks shooting off into the distance behind the boy while a layer of rocky dust floats against the ground in front of his feet.

Behind the rocks lies a small, dark brown tunnel with only a couple of torches lighting the way through. The Dark King immediately notices the darkness thinning, but still sees some of it seeping out from the tunnel itself. "Keep moving…" He says to his host body before taking the lead onward. Joe Dark lowers his arms and floats forward, entering the cavern and immediately noticing some stairs that lead to a pale, purple glow at the very bottom of it all. He follows the Dark King's spirit above each stair until they reach the floor below. Though there is more to the tunnel, the two beings need not advance, for the object of their desires rests on the ground in front of them.

It was a scepter with a rather interesting vial acting as the staff while a marble coil wraps around to connect the bottom part to the tip, where a blood red-violet gem lies encased in such a way that it looks like the eye of a monstrous deity. There are two cocoon-like wings besides the marble casing, and a miniature spiked half of a gate above it. Inside the vial was the pulsating black and purple essence of the being responsible for the pale darkness the Dark King had seen just a few moments ago. Lured in by the energy inside the scepter, Joe Dark bent forward and picked the relic up, holding it in the grasp of his right hand while looking into the jewel and grinning happily at what he was sensing. This time, he knew that he would get what he desired from the scepter, and the sensation was almost intoxicating to the boy's mind as he began to twist the relic around so the eye would be held out in front of the center of his body.

"Hold on there Joe Dark…" The Dark King hovers around his host body and with a simple whim forces his right arm to stop moving temporarily until he gets his say in on the scepter. "This scepter is a temporal anomaly…By all means, it shouldn't be here anymore, the same goes for the sentient being that exists inside of the vial…" Joe Dark glares out of the corner of his eyes towards the Dark King, angered by the fact that the shadow is sounding as though he doesn't want him to absorb the darkness from this scepter. "I'm just saying that while it is safe to take in the darkness, and in turn it will be simple for me to destroy the consciousness of whatever being inhabited the scepter so you can have full control of its darkness…Now then, if you would wish to continue…"

Nodding his head, Joe Dark closed his eyelids and concentrated on the scepter of darkness, releasing it from his hand as it began to float and swirl in the air in front of him. With his hands held out on both sides of it, the boy drained the darkness out of the vial in the form of miniature streams that connect to his fingertips and seep into his body to slowly increase the strength of his aura along with his power in general. Meanwhile, in the spiritual plain, the Dark King was joined by the ethereal essence buried inside of the scepter. The pale black and purple, crystalline mess of energy opened its burning reddish eyes and thinned its weary green pupils before speaking out to his only company in this realm in a subdued, puzzled yet deep tone of voice _"Where…Am I…This is not Solaris' mind…How can that be when I successfully fused with…Iblis…My victory was…Assured…How can this…be…"_

The Dark King, caring not for the tired ramblings of the being that was once known as Mephiles the Dark, looked at the spirit as his own eyes widened and his ethereal form spread out beyond the confines of his nearly spherical body in the form of a series of tendrils that thrust forward and dig deep into the mind of the creature. Forgoing a more subtle approach in favor of a rather brutal method of spiritual devastation, the Dark King gives Mephiles no time to recover from his long slumber as he uses his tendrils to push against the inner workings of the creature's spiritual mind and breaks him apart so gruesomely that he had not even a moment to scream in pain as the fragments of his spirit disperse and shrink into nothingness, while on the physical side of things the scepter of darkness shatters due to all of its darkness having been drained out down to the last drop.

The marble dust that falls into Joe Dark's glowing black and purple aura covered hands are kept in tightly as he clenches his fists and looks at them with an overwhelming sense of malicious joy on his face as he can literally feel every bit of power flowing through his body at this moment. It was more then anything he had felt before, and he couldn't help but feel mass ecstasy in his trembling body as his laughter echoed maniacally in the caverns and his aura flared around him in a rather controlled if not chaotic fashion. "Excellent…Whiter will not know what hit him by the time I'm through with him…" Though he enjoyed his newfound power, Joe Dark unwound his fists and glanced over his left shoulder upon hearing feet moving about outside the cavern. Lowering his aura to better focus on what was going on behind him.

He turned around and slowly ascended the stairs with a smile creeping onto his face while the Dark King followed him closely behind. Joe Dark walked up the stairs like a normal human being, since at the moment he didn't feel like exerting his power even to levitate. He reached the top of the staircase and saw that the sun was beginning to rise across the planet, its glowing edge blinding him slightly even though his lack of pause in his advance didn't suggest that the light affected him much. When he fully emerged from the cavern, he stood in place calmly and looked to the left to see a certain red echidna staring straight at him with his right fist brandished angrily in front of him "You! What have you done to the Master Emerald?!" He accused the boy of tarnishing the sacred jewel that he was protecting, and his accusation had a lot of evidence behind it considering the fact that he had come back to the altar not too long ago and noticed something amiss exuding around it and realized that the boy had a similar eerie sensation coming from his body.

"Ah…so you are the guardian of the Master Emerald, Knuckles the Echidna…" Joe Dark said with grim familiarity towards the creature standing before him. Naturally, the fact that this human recognized him but he couldn't say the same made Knuckles break his anger for a moment to express shock as his body began to tremble slightly "W-What did you say?" He said while trying to maintain his composure. "We already have the power we need, whelp…There is no need to pay any attention to this lowlife." The Dark King says as Joe Dark's grin widens with a lust for battle gleaming in his eyes. The Echidna did not hear the spirit's voice for obvious reasons, which made Joe Dark's ensuing sentence all the more stranger for him "And yet, I can't help but see a great chance to test out my new strength…"

The boy turned towards the echidna all the way and held his hands out beside his body, and with two snaps of his fingers darkness burst from the palms and flared up with a rather electrical appearance to it all. The power of his black aura caused a few strands of his hair to rise up, while his eyes widened in eager anticipation towards this battle. "Besides, perhaps I'll grab Whiter's attention by causing a little damage to this world…" As Joe Dark murmurs to himself with that second sentence, Knuckles regains his courage and looks at the boy with brash fury in his eyes, and with a quick pound of his knuckles in front of his chest he exclaims to his opponent "Fine, I don't care who you are, but you are trespassing on Angel Island and you touched the Master Emerald with those dirty hands of yours…So bring it on! I'm not going to let you escape my home alive!"

_Next Time: The Power of the Chaos Emeralds_


	2. Chapter 2

**Prologue Chapter 2: Wrapped in Black Phase 1: Sonic the Hedgehog**

"Oh, I will leave here alive…After I take care of both you and your pathetic emeralds!" Joe Dark, after making his intentions clear to the bold echidna, dashes forward across the air at high speeds. His movement causes the grass to be cleared away from the ground below his path of travel, and in a blink of an eye Knuckles is nearly struck straight in the chest by an ethereal black energy blade protruding from the boy's right fingers. But in a swift moment Knuckles clamps his hands together in front of his body and stops the boy from piercing him by applying all of his strength against the sides of Joe Dark's arm. The momentum from his flight is still there though, and after the impact creates a shockwave of separated darkness across the air Knuckles is forcibly pushed along the ground with the heels of his shoes breaking apart and sending chunks of rocks flying about beside him as he tries to push against the boy's attack and halt their momentum.

However, with a sadistic grin on his face Joe Dark quickly pulls back and thrusts his feet outward, kicking Knuckles straight in the gut and causing his pupils to shrink in pain as he is sent flying into the closest mountainside with enough force to create a mile wide crater. The entire island trembles and a few birds are rustled out of their resting places and into the sky, while Joe Dark feels nothing but joy as he floats precariously above the ground and watches as the red echidna slowly peels himself out of the center of the crater and lands onto the ground with his vision blurred for two seconds before he shakes his head and wiggles his hands out beside him. "That stung a bit…" Knuckles says with a bit of an after chuckle, as the impact with the wall barely affected him despite how much it should have.

Naturally, Joe Dark's smile fades away slightly upon seeing how easily Knuckles took his attack. If it weren't for a quick reminder from his memory banks that the echidna was rather durable and strong if not fast, then the boy would be in a fit of rage thinking that the scepter of darkness didn't give him as much of a power boost as he assumed it would. "Then perhaps I shall make it sting a bit more…" Joe Dark replies to Knuckles' comment with his grin returning ever so slightly, and immediately afterwards he spreads his arms out beside him as wide as possible and calls forth an aura composed entirely of pulsating black and purple darkness. The energy burns through the ground below him as sparks smite random points around the bottom half of his aura as the darkness compresses to fit around Joe Dark's entire figure.

As the boy's eyes release a bright red gleam through the shroud covering his body, Knuckles stamps one foot against the ground and raises his arms in front of his head to brace himself against the pressure exuding outward from his opponent's aura. "Man he's tough…But not tough enough!" After getting a firm grip on the ground with a few twists of his feet against the dirt, Knuckles grits his teeth and swings his arms out beside his body while fiery sparks begin to swirl around him, each one spawning from a glowing red ring that has appeared within a three each circumference from the edges of his shoes. As the echidna focuses with all of his might to power himself up, Joe Dark is nearly finished reaching the maximum level of strength his body can currently handle, as especially evidence by the sudden darkening of the skies and the crashing of black lightning along the ground around him.

In the end, Knuckles gains a super heated lava red aura that shades all other parts to match the color of his aura save for the eyes, which stare bravely focused at Joe Dark as the echidna slants his eyebrows and pulls apart his teeth to say to him at the top of his lungs "Alright intruder, lets see what you got!" With Joe Dark grinning subtly at Knuckles' brash desire to fight what will prove to be a losing battle, he quickly makes the first move by vanishing and bursting through the air until he was right in front of the echidna. However, the echidna's increased focus and stalwart position on the ground allows him to see the boy appearing ahead of time, and with a spiral of flaming sparks moving around his right fist Knuckles thrusts it straight out and pounds Joe Dark right in the gut.

The black aura disperses in all directions momentarily as all of Joe Dark's body freezes in shock due to how powerful the fist's impact felt against his body. But as his arms and legs lay limber in the air and his head sinks down slightly, he looks down at Knuckles' grinning face as he makes a slight "Ha…" noise due to the success of his attack while his other fist is slowly being charged up behind him, and with his eyes palpitating in joy over the fact that he managed to barely flinch in the face of what appears to be one of the echidnas strongest blow he smirks and lets slip through his teeth in a subdued tone of merriment "Is that all you got, mammal?" Joe Dark shows no signs of weakness in the tone of his voice, which caused Knuckles' eyes to widen in shock as he pulled back his right fist and thrust the opposite one straight out while releasing a powerful battle grunt from his body.

But much to his surprise, his punch is grabbed midway through by Joe Dark, who lowers his body without so much as a second having passed. He then wraps his fingers tightly around the glove, giving the echidna no chance of taking back what would prove to be his most fatal mistake. With his eyebrows slanted as he pushed against the echidna's arm and forced the creature onto his knees with one slow, painfully long effort while Joe Dark himself only took a couple of inch steps forward to keep up with Knuckles' sinking body. "Kneel…Kneel just like the foul creature of the earth that you are!" Joe Dark took great pleasure in controlling the echidnas movements, perhaps too much in fact as his eyes widened spryly in a very sadistic manner while Knuckles simply looked up at the boy and with his teeth grit while he tries to push against his opponent's might he says in a stuttered yet surprisingly brave tone of voice "Y-You won't get away with this!"

"Oh really now?" Joe Dark says with a widened smile and a curious raise of his eyebrows. "Sadly for you, I have already gotten what I wanted from this wretched island…Destroying your resolve is just a bonus to it all. But I am far too beyond you to even consider fooling around anymore, so its time for you to die…Nice, and slow…" With one strong push of energy through the confines of his palm, Joe Dark lifts his body diagonally into the air while raising his left hand above his head and causing a mass quantity of darkness to converge above the palm rather swiftly as it compresses into a more solidified blue and black sphere and the entire island trembles in the presence of the overwhelming darkness surrounding Joe Dark's body while the pressure of his aura slowly presses against Knuckles' body and the ground.

In a matter of seconds, the ground is pushed downward, and from the center of Knuckles' body outward a perfectly dome shaped crater is formed that is roughly seven feet deep and half a mile wide. With his sphere fully charged and the trembling mountains degenerating slightly to send rocks plummeting down towards the crater itself Joe Dark finally lets go of the echidna and lets him drop down into the crater with the bones in his knuckles cracked due to how long the boy had held onto him for. But the new Dark King was not yet done with his attack, as he flew slightly up into the air and thrust his left hand out in front of him while guffawing in maniacal delight as the energy crashed right against Knuckles' body and exploded into a dense dome shaped blast of ethereal energy that filled the entire crater and barely touched the bottom of Joe Dark's feet at the very top of it all.

Flung out from the blast is a battered and smoke covered Knuckles, who would be more then happy to just fall back down and let that be the end of it all. He could accept his failure then, for at least then still he'd be alive and able to owe up for his inability to stop this intruder at a later date…But just as he did not know what Joe Dark was capable of strength wise, he too did not realize that the boy was only getting started. With a quick thrust through the air that tore apart the fabric of the air around him and created a streak of black lightning along the path he flew across, the new Dark King appeared behind Knuckles and called forth a dagger into his right hand, which was quickly swung out a hundred or so times in the span of three seconds, creating a furious, flashing field of crescent black strikes around the helpless echidna that suspended him in place as he took the full force of every single attack until the very end of the onslaught where gravity began to drag Knuckles down towards the "safety" of the ground.

However, with a raise of his left hand and an arrogant gesture of his head backward an inch Joe Dark blasts Knuckles straight in the face with a widespread burst of dark energy. With his dagger vanishing behind him and the echidna being launched towards the ground at rapid speeds, the boy vanishes and travels through the air even faster than Knuckles is descending with a trail of dark vapor extending from the palm of his right hand until he appears beside the echidna, at which point the new Dark King swings his left hand out and hits him hard with the backside of it to send him flying straight towards the bridge. Knuckles' hard head collides through the center of each wooden board along the bridge, splitting them all in two and causing the broken pieces to fly off into the air until the sonata of sounds caused by their destruction ends with the echidna smashing head first into the slanted ground to the left of the Master Emerald shrine.

As a massive plume of dirt rises and falls from the sky, Knuckles rests in the indent created by his powerful impact with the ground. The echidna slowly creaks his eyelids open, his fists sore and stiff with pain while the rest of his battered body looks incapable of moving even a single muscle to try and pry himself free. He looks on ahead with one eyelid becoming limp and sinking halfway down while he gains a disgruntled expression and looks out towards the devastated bridge. Joe Dark floats slowly yet ominously across the gap between the two ropes, his pale black aura hiding the piercing eyes of a demon as he raises his right hand into the air with a sadistic smile gleaming at the bottom of his face and his energy charging ready to deliver the final blow that would not only kill the helpless Knuckles, but also destroy the Master Emerald altar in its entirety.

"I-I'm sorry…B-But I guess I wasn't able to protect…The M-Master E-E-Emerald…" Knuckles, apologizing to those who preceded him as he recognizes the hopelessness of this situation, quivers slightly in the face of death and with a smirk on his face he says to himself "S-Sonic…Tails…Forgive me for dying on you like this…" As the echidna begins to close his eyelids and Joe Dark's attack grows in strength to the point that the whole island would likely break apart if it hits its target, the two figures are completely unaware of someone descending from the sky above at a rapid pace until the very last seconds, when the boy of darkness hears a whirring noise getting closer and closer, and the very moment he chooses to look up he is struck straight in the face by a rotating blue creature tucked into the shape of a ball.

Recognizing the person immediately, Knuckles' eyes light up in surprise as much as his muscles will allow him to, and he blurts out the person's name with an equal amount of shock "S-Sonic!" Joe Dark's attack is disrupted by the sudden blow to his body, and he is pushed downward against his will as the blue creature bounces off and flies through the air in an arc until he is above solid ground. At that point he unfurls himself and lands on his feet. Sonic is a blue hedgehog with emerald green eyes, slick red shoes with a white stripe across the center, five thick quills attached to the back of his head along with two smaller ones behind where his shoulder blades should be and a couple of regular sized white gloves wrapped around his hands.

In most instances, Sonic would have a smile on his face, but upon glancing over his shoulder and seeing Knuckles' condition he looks back at Joe Dark with a cautious glare and asks him in a rather demanding tone "Alright, who are you, and what did you do to Knuckles?" Joe Dark pulls himself together and floats back up into his prior position. With curiosity on his mind as to how the hedgehog arrived here, the boy looks up and notices a small blue plane flying high above the island, and as it turns he sees a certain two-tailed yellow fox piloting it and finds his question answered in an instant. "Oh, I was just demonstrating to him the vast difference in strength between us…" He answers the second question without turning his eyes towards the hedgehog. He then tilts it to the left slightly with his grin easily noticed as he says rather quietly "As for my identity, you will never have a chance to concern yourself with that once I am through with you, Sonic the Hedgehog…"

Having been in the middle of a stretch that involved pulling his right arm across the front of his neck while bracing it with his folded left arm, the moment Sonic hears his name he glances to the right with his face expressing a subtle feeling of surprise despite how he truly feels in his mind about being recognized by this mysterious person. "Oh, so you know my name?" He inquires with a somewhat cocky attitude to further hide his surprise. "Of course…" Joe Dark says after turning his body towards the hedgehog and holding his arms out beside him, and with a sly laugh he notes in turn "After all, you are your planet's greatest hero, a being recognized amongst the grand cosmos as the 'fastest thing alive' with a rather boisterous attitude to match. Unfortunately, you'll find that both of those traits will prove worthless, if you are seriously considering engaging me in battle after what I did to that pathetic echidna friend of yours…"

Sonic glances over his left shoulder after Joe Dark's arrogance comment had finished and sees Knuckles' current condition as a fair warning that the boy is stronger then he appears to be. Even if he was likely faster, Sonic just couldn't risk relying on that alone for this battle, especially when its clear as day that the boy wasn't going to be one to hold back against his opponents. Turning his head back to look at Joe Dark, the hedgehog cracks a smile and says "Well sadly for you, I have a few tricks up my sleeves that Knuckles doesn't!" While briefly brandishing his right pointer finger at the boy. After that, Sonic spreads his legs apart so the heels of his shoes touch together underneath his waist, while his arms are held out beside him with both fists clenched and his head is bent forward slightly with eyelids sealed tightly to indicate that the hedgehog is focusing deeply on something.

As Joe Dark grins in eager anticipation of what was to come, he catches a flash of light growing brighter from the corner of his eye and with a moment of pause spent in bewilderment he turns towards the Master Emerald Altar, where the seven Chaos Emeralds have had their luminosity increased tenfold as they slowly rise into the air and gravitate towards Sonic, their celestial forms floating around his body in the form of an imperfect ring. The Chaos Emeralds spin around the hedgehog's body multiple times, energy filling his body rapidly much to Joe Dark's surprise. "W-What the hell?!" And soon enough, the boy of darkness is the one forced to hold his arms in front of his body to brace himself against the might of Sonic's increased power.

With a powerful scream as he flings his head back as far as possible and his quills rise up into the air while he swings all of his limbs out beside him with all of his strength as the Chaos Emeralds shoot off into the sky in the form of several colored rays of light. The volume of Sonic's scream increases slowly and gains an echo-y effect over time, while his body gains a white tinted aura that increases in density to the point that his whole figure appears covered in light. Suddenly, in a burst of uncontrolled energy, a dome of yellow light thrusts forth from Sonic's entire body and spreads out to encompass Joe Dark, the Master Emerald Shrine, and Knuckles while a pillar of similar light shoots into the air from the center of the dome.

Dozens upon dozens of fallen rocks and debris are flung across the air in a furious storm, while Joe Dark grits his teeth and bears through the onslaught of energy heading his way as the Dark King's spirit emerges from his back and mocks his host body by saying "So this is the power you were not allowed to obtain…A pity, is it not?" From the tone of his voice, it appeared as though the Dark King knew how things were going to turn out for Joe Dark, but the boy merely swung his arms out to the side and exclaimed through the lasting echoes of Sonic's scream "S-Shut up! I won't lose to anyone now, especially not this hedgehog!" As sparks of blue lightning travels across the dust storm created by Sonic's explosion of energy, the transformation comes to a swift end as the dome of light subsided with one last singular burst, leaving in its place a golden hedgehog with reddish eyes and quills that are held up behind his head. He has a similarly colored shroud of energy around his body while a few remnants of blue lightning spark around him inside of it. With a slightly serious frown on his face, Sonic keeps his fists gripped beside him while looking off to the side away from Joe Dark's body.

The pressure exuding from the hedgehog had vanished for the time being, but the power was still there inside of him. Even so, Joe Dark lifted his head up and with a brash smirk on his face he said to Sonic "Yes, I'm familiar with your Super form as well…But I assure you, you aren't the first person to make your appearance golden in order to try and defeat me. And just like those who came before me, you too will fall!" Widened his frown into a cocky smirk, Sonic laughs in his mind at Joe Dark's boast and with a quick burst of speed the golden hedgehog appears in front of the boy and punches him straight through the aura and into his gut. The shock from the boy's face comes all too quickly, and he only has two seconds to stutter in pain before his body is launched through the air and straight through the nearby mountain face.

Sonic follows the path that his opponent was launched through in the form of a golden streak of light, where it takes him only four seconds to move through the hole created by the boy's impact and arrive in front of him ready to perform another swift yet powerful blow. Joe Dark recovers in the interim though, and with all of his might he clamps his hands together in front of his body to catch Sonic's fist. Naturally, the hedgehog lets out a confused "What?!" to match his expression while Joe Dark smirks long enough for Sonic to see it before he latches onto his fist and spins himself around at a rapid pace, carrying the hedgehog around in an inescapable rotation until the boy of darkness identifies the other mountain nearby, at which point he releases Sonic from his grip and hurtles him straight towards the roughest looking part of the mountainside.

But as the hedgehog moves towards the mountain back first, he opens his eyelids and smiles again while exclaiming to himself "Chaos Control!" In an instant, Sonic vanishes from sight while Joe Dark's arrogant grin leaves his face and he mutters "Chaos Wha-" only a moment before the golden hedgehog reappears beside Joe Dark and socks him one right in the side of his face. The boy is launched across the sky, his body spiraling around as it hits the top of the nearby mountain and causes him to bounce upward slightly until Sonic appears below him and kicks him square in the gut with both of his feet to send him flying so far up that he heads above the clouds.

Joe Dark, angered and damaged by Sonic's high-speed attacks, quickly thrusts both of his arms out beside himself to break his rapid ascension while at the same time gathering a massive capacity of his darkness into the palms of his hands. Thrusting them both down below himself as he sees the hedgehog's glow piercing the clouds below him, Joe Dark unleashed a powerful bombardment of black spheres with pulsating blue cores in hopes of forcing the hedgehog to tank them all in order to survive. But with his renowned speed Sonic need not raise his arms to block the rain of dark spheres, for he swerves back and forth across the air while leaving behind a golden streak between the gaps to show that he has no reason to use Chaos Control to avoid such easily predicted attacks.

At the end of the onslaught Joe Dark take the remaining energy in desperation and releases an arc shaped blast of darkness meant to launch the golden hedgehog towards the ground. But at the momentum he is currently going at, nothing can stop him except himself and he thrusts his right fist straight into Joe Dark's jaw. The rupture coming from his bones signifies that Sonic had delivered a critical blow to the boy of darkness. In turn, the aura fizzles about as Joe Dark is spun around in the air repeatedly, and with a quick utilization of Chaos Control Sonic appears above the boy and slams both of his feet right in time to hit him straight in the backside. As the boy's head jolts upward and his expression of pain quivers for a few seconds, Joe Dark is thus quickly sent rocketing towards Angel Island below.

After breaking through the clouds and hurtling towards the island's forest area, Joe Dark breaks through the layers of branches and leaves and crashes into the ground with enough force to be pushed through ten feet worth of dirt and rock that all rises up and is spread up around the hole where his body impacted with. Sonic descends to get a better look at the spot where his opponent had fallen to, and with a merry smirk he mocks his demoralizes his foe a bit by saying "Oh I'm sorry, what was that about my speed proving worthless?" The sounds of the hedgehog's voice echoes into the hole that Joe Dark was buried in, which only serves as fuel for the boy's anger as after a powerful burst of darkness that fractures the ground in a 1000 foot radius of the hole he flies right out and makes his way to the center of the uncontained pillar of energy that was released from his rather forced emergence from the island.

His expression and his raspy breathing showed just how seething his rage truly was as he looked straight towards Sonic and saw the golden hedgehog folding his arms in front of his chest while wiggling his right pointer finger at him and smirking confidently as he awaited the boy's next move. It was inconceivable, no, impossible to believe that a HEDGEHOG of all things would prove to be stronger than him even after he had grown in strength so very much from absorbing the scepter of darkness' powers. Joe Dark could somewhat fathom the possibility of a human surpassing him, such as what the star princess Rosalina and his loathsome enemy Whiter managed to do once before, but for a walking talking woodland creature to have the ability to cause him so much trouble was something that Joe Dark could never accept within his lifetime.

Naturally, the Dark King's spirit did not accept that possibility either, even though he was a little more subdued about the matter because he would not perish if his host body fell. Still, for the sake of not wanting to waste time trying to manipulate another person into taking his powers and deal with the Elemental Overlord, the spirit whispered into Joe Dark's ear in a ghastly tone "You know…You may want to consider transforming before you die, yes?" "I thought you said I COULDN'T transform until I obtained enough darkness!" Joe Dark voices his utter disbelief at the Dark King's supposed forgetfulness in a snarling tone through the gritting of his teeth, only for the spirit to laugh chillingly into his ear and elaborated further on his statement.

"If you recall, I stated that you would not be able to return to your strongest form…But as it stands now, you have a sufficient amount of darkness to transform into something whose strength lies between your Griffon and full Dark King states…With it, you should be able to crush this insignificant hedgehog beneath your feet. Of course, if you don't have any confidence in your abilities I can always…" Joe Dark knew where the spirit was heading with that comment, and he immediately swung his right arm out beside himself and declared "You will do no such thing…I can handle this bastard on my own." As the pillar of darkness dies down behind the boy of darkness, he grins and looks over at Sonic as the hedgehog is still waiting for him to make his next move. "I underestimated your powers, hedgehog…Guess what though? No one will ever do that again!"

With a powerful, angered scream Joe Dark lurches forward and lays his hands on the air in front of him. He is positioned in place like a furious beast as the part of his shirt and skin above his spinal cord splits and spreads apart at the seams, and a gigantic mesh of darkness created flesh begins to emerge from his body. The flesh coils up into spiral bundles that spread out in different directions as they form the frame of a creature unfamiliar to Sonic. As the frame is completed, the clouds grow black and red lightning comes down from above to smite Joe Dark straight through, and in seconds every molecule slowly begins to peel away from his form as it gets absorbed into the frame of the darkened flesh itself. This nightmarish transformation is followed up by the essence of darkness left behind in the chasm created by Joe Dark's release rising up in the form of hundreds of howling, pale black spirits that merge together in the center of the framework of the beast and slowly expand outward to encompass the entirety of it all, at which point the spirits change color to match the wavy black, white and purple ethereal texture that the frame itself had. What stands in the air now is a phantasmal beast with four three-clawed feet, a long majestic body that is similar to that of a lion, a tail that looks like the corpse of a snake, and a head that is thick and rounded in shape with three horns of various sizes attached to the back of his scalp and a couple of talons attached horizontally to the bottom corners of his jaw. With the transformation at an end as lightning crashed down from the skies all across the island, the front of the creature's face splits open like a gap to an alternate dimension and reveals a fleshy white eye with a hellfire red and yellow iris.

"This is the end for you, Sonic the Hedgehog…" Joe Dark, in a newly created gruff, chilling tone of voice, speaks to his surprised opponent without a mouth appearing at the bottom of his face. The hedgehog's pupils shrink slightly upon noticing the beast, but that surprise only lasts a second considering Sonic's prior history with abominations. He can feel the power exuding from the gargantuan demon's body though, and despite his earlier feelings regarding the creature's appearance he finds himself feeling a bit worried about facing down such a powerful creature. "Nothing can save you now…I will send you to Hell where you truly belong, wretch!" As Joe Dark emulated the attitude and ferocity of the Dark King himself, he was struck in the side of the head by something that pricked him gently. It felt only mildly annoying, but it was enough to get him to turn his head in confusion to see who dared to strike him.

Floating in the air with his jet propelled shoes is a black hedgehog with a white bundle of fur on his chest and red streaks across his quills, arms, legs, and under his eyelids. He wears a golden ring above both of his ankles and behind both of his gloves. Like Sonic he has five spikes, but the two on both sides are sticking upward at the tips while the top one is slightly longer. With his red eyes focused towards Joe Dark while his right glove is swung out beside him to signify just where his projectile attack dubbed "Chaos Spear" was launched, the black hedgehog slants his eyebrows and releases a confident "Hmph" while the monster of darkness inquires his new foe by asking "And just who might you be?" The hedgehog smirks, his eyebrows lifting slightly as he proclaims to the beast in a deep tone brimming with confidence "Haven't you heard? I am the ultimate life form, Shadow the Hedgehog!"

_Next Time: Chaos Collision_


	3. Chapter 3

**Prologue Chapter 3: Wrapped in Black Phase 2: Unified Chaos**

"Shadow…The Hedgehog?" Joe Dark whispers out the name of the black hedgehog that had just appeared beside him with his shoes keeping him levitated in place. After a few seconds of thinking back, the monstrosity murmurs out a quiet laugh and widens his single eyelid while speaking with familiarity "Ah yes, I remember you now…I just had to sort through all the other Sonic recolors in the universe to pinpoint YOUR identity." Shadow "hmphs" at the remark towards the differences in color between him and Sonic, and with a gesture of his head towards the golden hedgehog Shadow asks with a surprising amount of kindness "How you holding up there, Sonic?" He cared not about acknowledging the demon's presence or words, a mistake that would likely prove fatal as during the moment where he turned his head away Joe Dark turned his whole body towards the black hedgehog and lunged forward across the air at incalculable speeds.

But alas, having predicted such behavior, Shadow whipped out a green Chaos Emerald into the grasp of his right hand and activated "Chaos Control" to teleport away from the path of the beast's aerial rampage and reappear where said demon used to be. In the place of Joe Dark's charge was an ethereal trail of howling darkness, and though the close proximity to it unhinged Shadow a bit he was still aware enough of his surroundings to hear Sonic say to him after changing his expression towards surprise upon seeing the black hedgehog so easily avoid the beast's charge "Hehe, I'm holding up fine here on my end for now…But Shadow, what are you doing here?" With his head turned towards the beast as it re-adjusts its position to look at both hedgehogs with a single swerving of its eye, Shadow replies to Sonic by saying "I sensed something amiss and saw you transforming into your Super form from where Angel Island was located, so I warped here using Chaos Control…"

"Well you better get into your Super form too Shadow, cause I get the feeling this guy is one tough customer!" Sonic, sounding rather excited to be fighting this beast instead of worried like one naturally should be, kicks his feet against the air raring to go while Shadow smirks at his ally and with a flip of the green emerald says "Of course…Do you think I came here with just one of these?" Flying out of Shadow's body without an explanation as to where they all came from are the six other Chaos Emeralds, which slowly form a ring around the black hedgehog's body as he holds his arms out beside himself and a golden aura spawns around his body with red electricity crackling between the sides of it as he powers up. "Now witness the ultimate power!" He declares as the light around him intensifies to a blinding extending and erupts in a fashion similar to what happened to Sonic earlier.

At the end of his transformation, Shadow is left with all of the black on his body replaced with a golden tint, but unlike Sonic his quills remain in the same positions they were in before just as his eyes remain the same color. Joe Dark looks down at the two golden hedgehogs with a smirk growing in his mind before he notes with a hint of sarcasm in his voice "Super Shadow? Hahaha…How redundant…" Shadow clenches his fist in front of his chest and declares to the demon "You have no idea who you're messing with, do you?" "Oh, I believe I do…And it matters not how fast you are, how strong you are, or how many of you hedgehogs pop out of the wind works to fight me…You will all perish on this island, and be the first victims of my newfound power!"

"Then we won't hold anything back…You ready Shadow?" Sonic turns his head towards his ally and watches as he nods his head and smirks with his eyebrows arched to show how seriously he is taking this battle. "Ready when you are…" "Then lets do this!" Sonic declares enthusiastically, thus signifying the continuation of their battle against Joe Dark. Shadow starts things off by using Chaos Control to warp above the beast with his right fist clenched above his left shoulder as a circular golden glow appears around it. When the luminosity begins to flicker rapidly, Shadow flings his hand out to release a barrage of miniature yellow spearheads that bombard the backside of the beast repeatedly without him so much as flinching once in response. He looks on ahead and notices Sonic charging straight at him at his fastest current speed, his fist flung behind his head as he approaches the front of Joe Dark's face ready to strike the eye.

However, predicting his movements ahead of time, Joe Dark commands the skin of his body to peel apart from the rest of the ethereal flesh, the cells swirling around to create tendrils that lash forward and wrap themselves around Sonic mid-charge. The hedgehog expresses surprise with his eyes widened and a quick "Whoa!" from his mouth, but that is all replaced with a strained grunt as Sonic tries to push forward seeing as he got his fist out partway and found that he was only a few inches away from striking the beast and dealing a crucial blow to his body. Naturally though, Joe Dark feared nothing from the once blue hedgehog seeing as though his momentum has been all but lost after being wrapped in his tendrils.

But as he grinned inside of his mind and laughed subtly at Sonic, Shadow stopped his prickling bombardment and Chaos Controlled beside the closest tendril to deliver a swift roundhouse kick through the center of the limb born from darkness. This broke the tendril off and weakened the part still wrapped around Sonic enough for him to break through with a simple burst of chaos energy from his body. Thanking Shadow with a nod of his head, the blue hedgehog flies back with his body leaving behind a golden streak while the black hedgehog turns towards Joe Dark and launches a swift barrage of Chaos Spears at the eye to make him seal his eyelids and disable his vision long enough for him to use Chaos Control and join Sonic as he stops hundreds of feet away from the beast.

"Not bad at all…" Joe Dark says with a tone expressing how impressed he was at the two hedgehogs, but as he creaked his eye back open he smirked inside of his mind and said to them "Now let me show you something…" Within seconds the demon raises his right claw into the air and slashes across the sky. Three inverted neon gashes appear where his claws connected, but what happens next catches the two hedgehogs entirely off guard. The claw marks don't just appear beside the beast, but in various random locations across the sky. Eventually the veil of gashes closes in on the two hedgehogs, forcing them to split up and speed across the skies to dodge all of the marks that keep appearing around them.

In the end though, the two have fallen for Joe Dark's trap, and while Shadow sees an opening and rockets through the air with the help of his shoes to hopefully strike the beast while he appears unaware Joe Dark notices one of the gashes appearing beside where Sonic would soon be flying by and with but a whim he slips entirely through the claw marks beside him and charges straight into the blue hedgehog with the top of his head. Shadow swings his right fist out, but finds himself taken aback when he strikes the air even though just a millisecond ago the demon was standing motionless before him. "W-What?" The black hedgehog stutters out in surprise as he looks up and sees Sonic being flung into the air by the force created by the beast lifting his head back up.

Due to how swift and strong the impact of the demon's head was with Sonic's body, the blue hedgehog is momentarily stunned, though the amount of time it would take for him to recover exceeded that of which it would take Joe Dark to launch an attack through his pupil, as evidenced by the swift influx of darkness around his demonic eyelid and the hazy aura building up at around the iris. "Chaos Control!" Shadow, after shaking off how quickly the beast had moved across the battlefield, activated his signature ability to appear by Sonic and grab him around his stomach, where he then used it again to end up back where he started from at the exact moment that Joe Dark releases a spiraling black and purple beam of energy with a hazy pale black center that was roughly the size of his pupil. The ethereal beam pierced the clouds and ingrained a two-mile wide hole through it. If Sonic had been caught by that attack, he would have died and that would be the end of that.

"You won't be so lucky again…Hedgehogs…" Joe Dark murmurs quietly as his attack comes to an end. He then dissipates into the air via a distortion of his entire body into an ethereal black mist, while Shadow quickly lets go of Sonic upon feeling him waking up once more. The blue hedgehog picks himself up and places one hand on his head, his body feeling a bit wobbly after being struck straight on by the beast's cranium. "Heh, thanks for that Shadow…" Sonic says upon noticing his ally standing beside him. "We don't have time to stand around Sonic…That demon vanished and I can no longer draw a bead on him." Shadow's calm if somewhat unhinged warning struck Sonic's eardrums and made the hedgehog quickly lift his head up so he could look around and try to see where the beast went off to.

Both hedgehogs were entirely unaware that for all their efforts to seek out their opponent, he was standing right behind them with his presence blended in almost perfectly with the dark skies until the moment that he is ready to attack, at which point his body slowly solidifies while he releases a guffaw so chilling that the cold grip of the dead is felt crawling up the backs of both Sonic and Shadow and finally alerts the two of Joe Dark's existence behind them and allowing them to swiftly turn around to face the beast with looks of shock on their face that last a millisecond before two tendrils are shot out from the demon's back and wrapped tightly around the two hedgehogs' bodies. With their arms forced to their sides, the two heroes can only wiggles their limbs about and grunt as they try to break free from the might of the boy's darkened limbs.

Without saying another word, Joe Dark swings his tendrils towards the center of his face, smashing both creatures together with enough force to break both of the tendrils binding them in place while at the same time disorienting the two hedgehogs and giving himself enough time to follow-up with another attack. "Fall…" With a flash of crimson light from the center of the beast's eye a cascade of screaming spirits mixed in with an energy waterfall of misty darkness falls down upon the two heroes, forcing them to endure the howling cries of the damned while also taking all the damage that comes from the pure darkness itself. At the end of the cascade, the two heroes are left paralyzed by fear and they don't even know why they should be after everything else they had faced before in their lives. They still had control of their thoughts, but their muscles wouldn't respond to what their minds tried to command them to do.

They were helpless, and this helplessness caused Joe Dark to grin inside of his mind with an air of arrogance growing around his phantasmal body. "Despair…" He muttered again, and with his eye glowing a pale black for just a brief moment the sky opens up to reveal a pathway to another dimension far beyond the comprehension of man and beast. Joe Dark summons forth from this perilous dimension a shadowy claw that is said to have rend entire landscapes with but a single motion at its full strength. But as these powers are new to the boy of darkness, he can only utilize a fraction of this hand's might to slam it through the two hedgehogs and drag them downward towards Angel Island itself.

Within seconds, the palm smashes against the ground after breaking through all the branches it could, leaving the two heroes imprinted in the dirt face first with a mighty thud. The claw withdraws back into the void as Joe Dark looks down and sees both hedgehogs lying motionless on the ground, much to his delight. His new form had proved spectacularly against the planet's strongest heroes, and this made the boy of darkness feel ecstasy over what would surely be a fantastic battle against his hated enemy Whiter whenever they met again. Turning away from the fallen hedgehogs for but a moment, Joe Dark suddenly senses something amiss, something violent and angry in the air that was directed entirely towards him. "What's this now?" Curious towards what he was sensing, Joe Dark turned back towards the ground and saw Shadow forcing himself up off the ground with red electricity surging across the ground from his body.

The black hedgehog looks to the right for a moment at Sonic, who has taken a pretty bad beating from all the attacks flung his way, and grits his teeth in anger towards the new Dark King as his eyes start glowing an eerie pale white along with the front of his mouth and ears. The rings wrapped around his wrists and ankles glow a similar color, and detached themselves from his body without so much as another thought from Shadow. Instantly, Joe Dark can feel the hedgehog's power increasing dramatically, and that very power increases more as his body is completely covered by a dark red tint. With one quick use of Chaos Control, Shadow leaves behind a burning ring of energy around where his body once was and appears several feet away from the phantasmal beast.

After a period of silence too brief to calculate, Shadow growls unnaturally as his muscles tighten and a thick red aura rises across his entire body. As he bends down and tightens his fists beside him, the aura's density increases tenfold and a powerful violet hue is added to the aura, while the entirety of Angel Island trembles in the presence of his overwhelming power to the point that random rocks and debris are pulled up from the ground and dragged skyward without end by the crimson electricity shooting out from the ever-growing field of dark Chaos energy. Joe Dark stands in place, knowing full well that no matter what the hedgehog did, it would prove to be in vain. However, he was still fascinated by all the power that Shadow had been holding back, and let slip a single word to express his intrigue "Interesting…"

Shadow, laughing so hard that it was clear as day that his sanity had been broken, ends his charge by condensing his massive aura into a sparkling, uncontrolled orange edged white aura and declaring with all of his might "CHAOS CONTROL!" The black hedgehog warps in a nanosecond beside Joe Dark's behemoth of a body and rapidly punches him with each connection of his fist creating crimson shockwaves that are each a mile in circumference, and this process is repeated on all sides of the beast's body for ten seconds. By that point in time, Shadow appears in front of the beast and claps his hands together to launch a swift if large bolt of chaos energy known as the "Chaos Lance", which is then followed up by the black hedgehog getting up close and personal with the demon as his lance pierces through the top of Joe Dark's head and declaring with one final breath "CHAOS…"

The white hot glowing segments of Shadow's body increase their luminosity to blinding levels while the red tint expands outward the exact moment that the black hedgehog declares in blinding rage "BLAST!" All of the energy that Shadow had built up until this point is expunged in one magnificent if destructive blast of fire and chaos energy, the explosion shaped like a glowing white with red edges dome of light that rapidly expands outward across not just the sky, but eventually the island itself as large parts of the forest and nearby mountains are thoroughly annihilated as the edge of the Chaos Blast makes contact with them. Even though the blast radius didn't cover the whole island, the attack itself was still fairly dangerous simply because of the winds kicked up by it along with the brightness that spread out for miles beyond the island and grabbed the attention of the people observing from the mainland down below, even more so then the sudden appearance of black clouds did earlier. Tails and Knuckles are unharmed simply because of they are just outside the range of the destructive explosion, but as the echidna lurches against a wall with a terrible feeling of déjà vu going through his mind he knew that he'd have to reprimand Shadow for causing obscene amounts of harm to Angel Island.

Finally, everything reaches an unnatural state of peace for the moment as the explosion winds down and Shadow is left in his normal form with only his shoes keeping him suspended in the air. He is exhausted, both mentally and physically, by the effort it took him to use that supercharged Chaos Blast, and even though his suppressor rings have returned to his body he knew it would take a fairly long while for him to recover from this ordeal. That is, if it weren't for the fact that the beast he tried so hard to kill was still alive in front of him. Shadow lifted his head up in utter shock and fear of the monstrosity as he noticed that despite the many singe marks alongside the smoke rising ominously from his body, Joe Dark was relatively unharmed. Out of fear and anguish the black hedgehog asks with his body quivering "W-What are you?!"

In response, Joe Dark sneers inside of his mind and sends two tendrils out to bind Shadow in place temporarily before pulling him in closer and widening his eyelid to peer deep into the black hedgehog's frightened pupils and declare in a chilling, subdued tone meant to strike more despair into his opponent "I am nothing more than your death manifested into a physical form, Shadow the Hedgehog…" But as Shadow stares deep into the ghastly pupil of the beast he sees something that strains his mind to try and recognize, and from there the black hedgehog mutters in fear "M-M-Mephiles?" The name matters little to Joe Dark, and with a single raise of the tendrils as a prelude the beast flings Shadow back towards the ground beside the now reverted Sonic, his body crashing down hard and creating a plume of dirt that rises up and obscures the two hedgehogs from the nightmarish eye of Joe Dark.

"And that's…the end of that…" The two hedgehogs were alive, albeit barely as detected by the gargantuan demon, but he was not going to kill them considering it would be much more frightening for them to live with the fact that someone as strong and frightful as himself existed in the universe. Joe Dark loved what this new form of his was capable of, and calling back to the Dark King's words inside of his mind he expresses ecstasy at the fact that he is not even at his strongest at the moment. Whiter was surely doomed when their rematch came to be, and the demon couldn't wait to combat him once more. Joe Dark turned around all ready to leave this miserable planet to its own devices when suddenly something shifted in the air. A sharp rise in power caused a jolt to pass through and briefly stun the demon before he said to himself "W-What the hell? I-It can't be…"

Pinpointing the exact location of the growing energy source, Joe Dark bends his head down and looks at the Master Emerald Altar, where the seven Chaos Emeralds have repositioned themselves onto the pillars surrounding it. That was not the event that caused the new Dark King to be at a lose for words though. In a matter of seconds, each Chaos Emerald grew until they were each the size of the Master Emerald itself, only with their bodies becoming completely engulfed in white light in the process. The Master Emerald then reacted to the presence of these "Super" Emeralds by glowing even brighter then they were, the light expanding outward until the entire shrine was engulfed. It was then that Joe Dark lifted his head up with his eye widened in complete shock as while he was busy focusing on the Emeralds a massive pillar of white light with multiple colors alternating as the main tint of the edges bursts from the ground where the two hedgehogs are and pierces the high skies above.

Glancing over his shoulders with his body trembling slightly in surprise, Joe Dark follows through all the way and glances into the center of luminous pillar to see both Sonic and Shadow floating in mid-air with their bodies now containing a flashing neon glow that replaces the most primary color. The two beings don't even take a moment to say anything to the demon in front of them before declaring to themselves "CHAOS CONTROL!" Within a split second the two hedgehogs rise diagonally towards each other and mesh together in a burst of power so strong that it releases a wide light-blue barrier of light that covers them under the disguise of a sky blue shadow. The island starts to tremble again as Joe Dark feels a million tons of pressure exuding from the slowly compressing dome of energy surrounding the hedgehogs.

He has to use all of his might to prevent himself from being blown away, and in a few seconds Joe Dark has to close his eyelids slightly as the luminosity of the swirling energy dome proves to be too much for him to bear. Various blasts of pure light shoot out from the dome, proving just how unrestrained the power contained within energy truly was at the moment. Near the end of the earth-trembling event a shockwave of pure chaos energy pushes itself into the dome and causes it to burst in a spectacular display of burning white light that encompasses far beyond the reaches of the island and releases the streams of blue electricity that represent the absolute purity of the Emeralds power across the entire island, the effects of the electricity healing all the damage done to Angel Island's environment thus far to an excruciatingly swift degree.

At the burning golden core of this energy dome the creature stretches his body out in all directions and expunges all the excess energy out through the top, creating a pillar of light similar to the one seen earlier but much, MUCH larger in scale. Finally, it all comes to an end as the light fades away to leave behind the creature that was created through this magnificent display of power. It is a sky-blue hedgehog with nine quills on its head, the bottom two on both sides having the red stripes that Shadow bore. The hedgehog's eyes were red, his chest fur was of the same texture as Shadow's but was shaped to look more like a thickened "V", and his shoes appeared to be a fusion of Sonic and Shadow's. In fact, the eyelid shut creature with the vibrant aura that shifted rapidly between all the colors of the Chaos Emeralds was pretty much exactly that, a fusion between Sonic and Shadow caused by them activating Chaos Control in unison while their bodies and minds are perfectly synchronized with the Master Emerald and the evolved Super Emeralds.

As Joe Dark floated in the air murmuring in disbelief of the creature in front of him, the spirit of the Dark King appeared behind him and recognized the unfamiliarity in his host body's troubled mind "Hahaha…So things appear to have taken a turn for the worst. Perhaps it would be for the best if we escaped while we still have a chance…" Though the Dark King tried his hardest to hammer a warning into the stuttering Joe Dark's mind, the boy of darkness grit his teeth inside of his mind and said to the hallow spirit "I am not backing down do you hear me…I'm still in control of this battle in spite of this unforeseen element!" After which the boy looked towards the glowing aura and the hedgehog it belonged to and asked in a furious rage "WHO ARE YOU?!"

The fused hedgehog opens its eyelids up and smirks, declaring in a voice that was an echoing mixture of Sonic's and Shadow's "To quote yourself, 'I am nothing more than your death manifested into a physical form', but if you must truly know my name is Shadic!" "…Shadic, is it now?" Joe Dark calms himself down, keeping up his confidence as much as he could as he closed his eyelid slightly in anger and declared to the fused hedgehog "So you think that just because you two hedgehogs fused together through some asinine means you now stand a chance against me?! I have beaten you down enough times, and I was going to leave you alive as an act of mercy…But now you have defied me for the last time Shadic, SO YOU ARE NOT LEAVING THIS ISLAND ALIVE!"

_Next Time: Clash of Titans_


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:  
**

Apologies must be given out now for the lateness of this chapter. Flu bugs are going around lately, and I just so happened to catch one. Thus I didn't end up writing for a couple of times while I recovered. Four day updates aren't going to be a common thing, I can assure you on that.

* * *

**Prologue Chapter 4: Wrapped in Black Final Phase: World Breaking Climax**

"Then come, make the first move if you can, demon." Shadic, the Chaos Control fusion form of Sonic and Shadow, taunts the bestial Joe Dark with a wave of his right hand after hearing his entire arrogant boast. "Very well, I WILL!" With but four words as the prelude, Joe Dark lunges forward across the air at his fastest speed, his body coming within inches of Shadic's grinning face with his right claw ready to rend his flesh when with nothing more than a smirk the cyan hedgehog zips across the sky and decks the beast hard in the gut with a rising kick from his right foot. Joe Dark's eye widens briefly as he is staggered by the blow to his gut, and Shadic chuckles at the pain he has inflicted to the beast before he activates Chaos Control and reappears right where he was before with his arms folded in front of his body and an expression on his face that was befitting of his cocky attitude as he said to the recovering Joe Dark "I'm waiting for that first move."

He mocked the demon for being unable to keep up with his speed, striking a powerful blow to the boy's confidence after the pain from the physical strike. Joe Dark recovers not long after that and stares the hedgehog down with an angered glare, his eye gleaming red for a moment before a distorted beam of negative energy is expunged from the pupil. Shadic only has to exercise a bit of his speed in order to fly above the beam and get into position to swing his right hand out in front of him to unleash a bombardment of Chaos Spears down onto the backside of the hulking beast. With the massive increase in strength, these spears don't just prick Joe Dark's back and leave it at that, but rather they explode upon contact with the darkened skin and cause the demon to rear his head up and unleash a distorted roar of agony.

But as the attacks come to an end Shadic's expression flinches as he notices Joe Dark lifting his head up furiously with tendrils emerging from all ends of his body, each one lashing out in rapid succession to try and nab the speedy hedgehog as he simply dodges each one with consecutive flash steps across the sky. But as Shadic grows tired of dodging these attacks and yawns a couple of times in between appearances, he chooses to dash between some of the tendrils and punch Joe Dark right in the cranium. The beast is sent rocketing across the sky like an uncontrollable bullet, his body piercing through the island diagonally until he emerges below it with his claws grinding against the air to keep himself from moving any further then he requires.

With a sudden shift in the air around him Joe Dark feels a swift breeze blow by the side of his face and quickly turns around to see Shadic standing in the air waiting for him with a smirk on his face. "Damn you, hedgehog…." Joe Dark says with an irritated snarl in his voice as he glares into the eyes of his opponent for a few seconds before Shadic chuckles and closes his eyelids. "WRONG MOVE!" Hoping to take quick advantage of the hedgehog's arrogance, Joe Dark's eye widens furiously as his pupil gleams palely and a powerful vacuum swirls inward towards the rest of his eye's circumference to drag the hedgehog closer as he stands seemingly unaware of what was going on in front of him.

Joe Dark's plan was to get Shadic in close and annihilate him with a swift flash of chaotic energy, but as the eye glowed a bright red the cyan hedgehog opened his eyelids up and activated Chaos Control just in the nick of time as the beast unleashed his might in the form of a hazy crimson bolt of energy. But unlike prior times where he allowed himself to take unnecessary damage from his foe Joe Dark quickly shut off his beam with a tight sealing of his eyelid and used his mind to see through the darkness on his body and summon forth five tendrils that lashed out and wrapped themselves around Shadic's body the exact moment he reappeared behind him. "Predictable…" The beast said to mock the hedgehog, and with a quick swing of his body he turned things around on Shadic for once by charging forward and slamming the cyan hedgehog into the side of the island with all of his might.

As parts of the rocky face of the island broke off and crumbled into the sea, Shadic's eyes were predicted from the dust thanks to his eyelids recoiling from the impact against the hardened surface. But he had to open them up and get a grasp on the situation in front of him while he still had a chance, especially since he heard the howls of the undead coming from around Joe Dark's body. The phantasmal beast was pushing hundreds of agonized souls through his body and into his tendrils, the failure of their lashing arms creating spikes across the darkened surfaces at speeds that gave Shadic only two seconds to save himself from being impaled across his entire body. Looking deep inside of his reserves of chaos energy, the fused hedgehog forces enough energy into his hands in order to create a burst field of black and red that disintegrates three of the tendrils and frees up enough of his strength to break the other two with a flex of his arms.

"What?!" Joe Dark declares in fevered shock as Shadic claps his hands in front of his body with the chaos energy still flowing and unleashes a Chaos Lance that strikes the demon right as he closes his eyelid and sends him hurtling backwards across the air with his body forcibly turned upward to the point that when the energy lance is broken the body stops turning and flies faster across the air. Shadic quickly catches up with it though and starts his next onslaught off with a swift left hook to the gut, followed up by a series of alternating punches performed in various directions yet all of them containing the same amount of power that the previous one did. The two figures are dragged across miles and miles of air above the sea, Angel Island growing smaller and smaller as Shadic is seen only as a streak of neon light shimmering across the sky.

The hedgehog keeps punching, his body going increasingly faster in tune with the rapidness of his punches as he tries his hardest to tear through the darkened body of the beast and reach the human that is in control of it all buried deep within the blackened flesh. But for all of his punches the skin keeps healing itself, and the fused hedgehog is entirely unaware of the fact that the Dark King's spirit is fueling the beast enough to allow the external damage to be regenerated at a rapid pace. "CHAOS IMPACT!" As their travels have brought them 4/5ths around the entire planet, Shadic pulls his right fist back and charges it full of chaos energy, unleashing it all with the aforementioned attack declaration and his knuckles colliding straight against the beast's body.

Joe Dark is thrust across the sky at a pace that is faster than Shadic's current one, his body releasing shockwave after shockwave to speed up his rocketing body to even further degrees. Each shockwave represents a different Chaos Emerald in its color, with the final one being a gigantic, double-layered green one to represent the Master Emerald itself, and the bottom edge of this shockwave manages to clip the ocean surface and create a radiant splash of water into the air that doesn't go unseen by the nearby beach-goers. Finally, with a full rotation completed in under thirty seconds, Joe Dark's body collides straight into the thickest edge of Angel Island itself, his hulking form pushed through layers upon layers of dirt, clay and gravel until his momentum is slowly stopped just before he emerges from the other side. Shadic returns to the glorious island in the sky with his arms folded in front of his chest and a weary expression on his face as he looks towards the ground where he predicted Joe Dark would have stopped and waits, feeling deep down that the demon was not quite done for yet…

Sure enough, in an eruption of pure malice and rage the ground burst apart above where Joe Dark was, a heaving helping of darkness and phantoms spiraling out in a raucous pillar of energy from which the beast stands before with his body becoming nothing but a pitch black shadow in the face of the crimson black light that spread out across the circumference of the pillar and reflected in the eyes of Shadic. Joe Dark was no longer playing around, as he had gone to his maximum level of power to face down the fused hedgehog and murder him in cold blood for the injustices he was committing. "I WILL BREAK YOU, YOU LICENTIOUS MAMMAL!" He exclaims with an echo so powerful that some of the noise reaches the mainland and frightens the on looking citizens.

Within a second Joe Dark lunges his whole body forward with gruesome distortions of his form appearing behind him across a zigzag pattern along the air that Shadic is barely able to focus on before the beast appears before his eyes and thrusts his right claw towards his chest ready to impale him. The hedgehog zips back and thrusts his left hand outward, using a barrage of Chaos Spears to throw the creature off-guard momentarily, only to be surprised when all of the bright golden projectiles dissolve upon making contact with the waving black aura surrounding the demon's bestial form. With a flinch of his eyelids, Shadic keeps moving back as he sees Joe Dark stamp his foot against the air and create a shockwave that signifies his next move as that of another charge, only this time he lunges straight forward instead of trying to confuse his foe with rapid back and forth movements.

Shadic falls for this charge, his gut being impacted by the blunt force of the beast's thick skull as he only has enough to move three feet into the air to try and escape the attack. As the fused hedgehog is stunned in place Joe Dark blurts out "You were at your upper limit from the start…" He then pulls his body back and lifts his head up while pulling in coils of darkness from the remains of the pillar he emerged from into the center of his pupil ready to finish the mammal in front of him off in a swift display of brute energy, and the few fleeting seconds before he lets his attack off he ends his prior sentence with a brashly arrogant "I ON THE OTHER HAND CAN ONLY GO FARTHER!" He then unleashes a coiled red and violet beam of energy from his eye with but a single thrust of his head being required there to get himself into position.

The recoil from his beam pushes Joe Dark back across the air for ten feet due to improper bracing, but his beam hits its mark square on without so much as a Chaos Control from the cyan hedgehog. The beam dies down with a quiet fizzle, and Shadic is nowhere to be found in the air before Joe Dark. But despite how triumphant he should feel, the beast was too aware of his environment to be fooled by his supposed victory. He turned his head to the side, and saw the fused hedgehog floating behind him with a few signs of injury on his fur and skin while his eyelids were arched a bit to show how serious he was now taking this battle. "You are tenacious…Too much so, in fact." Turning his body around to look straight at his foe, Joe Dark arches his eyebrow in subtle anger and says to him "But even tenacity can't save you from death's cold embrace…"

"Hmph, are you nothing but talk? You won't beat me with mere words." Shadic says cockily, which causes Joe Dark to arch his eyebrow further and growl inside of his body before going silent and choosing to continue the battle by creating a large gash in the air in front of him with a swipe of his left claw and firing a prolonged blast of energy into the gash soon afterwards. Multiple gashes appear across the sky in various directions and locations, similar to what happened earlier before the hedgehogs' fusion, but instead of anticipating the creature's charge Shadic watches as multiple crimson lasers are launched out from the gashes, each one homing in on him and forcing him to warp around with Chaos Control to avoid being hit until he sees an opening between the lasers and dashes forward to try and strike Joe Dark.

A swift punch is thrown out, but the beast leaps through his own gash in the nick of time to avoid being even grazed by the knuckles. The cyan hedgehog looks around, remembering what happened to the Sonic half of him when the beast disappeared last time. He checks all the gashes in the air, finding that all of them around him have vanished save for the one the creature thrust his body into at the last second. Since it takes only a millisecond for the beast to emerge, Shadic knew that there was only one thing for him to do to deal with him. With a simple thought from his mind, all of the colors in the environment become inverted as everything crawls to a snails pace. This is Super Chaos Control, a move that takes a lot of effort to maintain but allows Shadic and a being he once fought before to slow time to the point that he can detect even the fastest of foes. Sure enough, in a matter of moments, Joe Dark suddenly reappears from the gash beside Shadic, his mind certain that the hedgehog is unaware of his presence.

But the fused hedgehog turns his head to the right a couple of inches, a motion that takes five seconds in his current state but a brief moment to everyone else who was watching him. Without so much as hesitation in his mind, Shadic attacks the beast with a burst of speed and a volley of rapid punches all across the demon's face, which causes Super Chaos Control to break instantly upon detecting his aggressive impulses. Joe Dark is given no chance to defend himself and is unable to retreat back into the gash as the damage being inflicted to his body breaks his concentrations on the unholy distortions in the air. After striking the demon enough times, Shadic leaps higher into the air and after a quick horizontal spin of his body he drops his right foot down against the creature's skull to force his entire body to plummet downwards face first at a uncontrolled, rapid pace.

Shadic then takes both of his hands below his waist before the beast reaches the ground and with a yellow dome of chaos energy compressing between his palms he releases an onslaught of Chaos Spears that track Joe Dark's rapid descent and strike him all across his body like a series of needles. The echoing roar of the beast proves just how well Shadic's attacks are affecting the creature, and this very roar ends the moment Joe Dark impacts with the center of the ruins resting within the forest of Angel Island. The collision with the ground creates a circular wall of dirt that pushes outward and breaks many trees away from their root-y hold in the clayed underground. To make certain that the beast stays down for good though, Shadic got ready to perform one final move.

Curling up into the shape of a ball, Shadic spun around at a furious, rapid pace to the point that the very light around him began to be forcibly dragged into his body in the form of multiple orbs of hollowed light. Eventually a luminescent glow begins to expand outward from the hedgehog's body, removing all traces of color from his body save for the yellow glow of his eyes as he emerges from his curled up form and glares straight down at the lumbering beast. Containing all of his charged up energy into the grasp of his right fist, Shadic streaks downward across the sky at light speed, breaking all definable laws of physics in the process as he strikes Joe Dark in the back with all of his might, making certain that the full brunt of his strength didn't extend past the beast and destroy Angel Island in the process.

Joe Dark lets out a bellowing scream at the top of his lungs, his pain mixed in with the howls of a thousand spirits as his head is forcibly lurched upward and he feels his body nearly splitting in two against its will. The rest of the ground around the beast is unaffected thanks to Shadic's control, and the fused hedgehog lifts his body up off of Joe Dark and performs a backflip onto the uneven ground outside the pit that the beast had been forced into. He looked down, watched as the demon went unnaturally silent, and took this as a sign that he had secured victory against the vile monstrosity. "That's the end of that…" The hedgehog's voice echoed with the voices of his two counterparts, and he turned around and began to slowly walk away from the battlefield with a cheerful smile on his face.

Meanwhile, in the belly of the pit, Joe Dark staggers, trying his hardest to pull himself together and stand back up again while the Dark King's spirit taunts him from behind "To think that those hedgehogs would be capable of this…As much as it annoys me, I can't help but be somewhat impressed at their feat here today. Even if you lost to them, I still believe that you have acquired the strength necessary to defeat the Elemental Overlord…Let us just accept this loss and escape while we still have a chance to do so." The Dark King was doing a horrible job of comforting someone as arrogant and angered as the raging beast that is Joe Dark, as the boy pushes his hulking body upward and says to the shadow behind him "N-Never…"

"Oh?" The Dark King is both curious yet disappointed by his host body's response. "I don't think you quite understand, child…The hedgehog currently cannot sense us in our weakened state. Escaping from this planet would be far too easy for us, and yet you do not wish to do this…Why?" "Because I cannot let someone stronger than me live! You remember what happened the last time I fought Whiter, where increasingly stronger forces allowed him to continue living beyond the scope of natural reason! I will not allow anyone to get in my way again, not even a hero from another world! THIS PLANET DIES NOW!" Discarding all forms of reasoning in his anger induced bout of insanity, Joe Dark pushes himself onto all fours and leaps high into the air at speeds that are far too high to calculate.

But Shadic senses the demon's movements thanks to the ever-growing malice that seeps out of his body and quickly turns his head around to look up and see where Joe Dark was up to. The demon kept rising higher and higher at an inhuman, rapid pace until he was at the edge of the planet's atmosphere with the top of the sun shadowing his body while he turns around and leans towards the planet with his hatred having reached a boiling point. "He…He wouldn't!" Shadic says in a tone of panic as he recognized the desperate action that the boy of darkness was about to take against him and the rest of the planet as well. "THIS IS THE END OF YOUR WORLD, SHADIC, AND YOU WILL HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF FOR THE COUNTLESS CRYING INNOCENTS THAT YOU HAVE DAMNED BY REFUSING TO DIE BY MY HAND SOONER!"

With his angered declaration spoken loudly enough for the fused hedgehog and other various denizens to hear down below, Joe Dark raises his demonic head up high and let out a roar so powerful that it actually caused part of the lower segment of his face to split open to reveal a fanged mouth that carried within it the howling screeches of a million scattered ghouls, zombies, and other various members of the damned and undead. The confines were colored a mixture of red, black and orange, all of those colors glowing demonically as Joe Dark listened to the space venturing echoes of his roar and lowered his head down to aim straight at the planet and prepare his world destroying final attack. The energies kept within his mouth push outwards like a bubble, the rough rounded circumference grinding against the rigid teeth without breaking until it emerges right out in full and reveals itself as a deathly sphere of crimson energy with black electricity sparkling in and out of existence at various intervals while it quickly expands in size due to the amount of energy being fed to it getting increased exponentially by the beast's will.

At the exact moment where the sphere grows larger than Joe Dark himself, Shadic finally catches a glimpse of the attack itself beyond the glare of the sun thanks to a red sparkle that looks eerily similar to a demonic star light in the night sky. The hedgehog knew with all of his heart that if this attack was allowed to strike the Earth, then the demon's claim would hold true and there would be nothing that could be done to reverse the loss of the planet. Gritting his teeth in utter disbelief that the boy of darkness would go this far, Shadic quickly turns around and dashes through the forest at high speeds, knowing that if he went to face the beast directly he would likely be annihilated by the attack or he would end up causing the attack to launch prematurely and cause irreversible harm to Earth.

Racing towards a wide open plain on Angel Island, Shadic wasted no time in flipping his body around and letting his momentum grind to a halt while he spread his arms out wide while a faint golden aura wavers around his body. As the demonic orb grows bigger in size, it causes adverse changes in the planet's atmosphere, and the skies not only darken but crimson lightning strikes down across the entire planet's surface to distort and destroy all that it touches, replacing the destruction with thin fountains of howling spirits that do nothing but frighten everyone near them. The black electricity shooting out around the orb spreads across the skies, tainting the bluish glow and leaving nothing but the vastness of space as the sight above. Thankfully, this does not mean that the planet if deprived of oxygen, but that could always change if Shadic does not act quickly.

With his body focused across the entire planet, Shadic calls upon every golden ring that he can find and mentally drags them into his very being like a super powerful magnet, each one ringing inside of his eardrums as they are collected. The sky around Angel Island is filled by the thin, golden trails of light streaming from the end of each ring, with all of them heading straight for the sparkling gold centerpiece of this spectacle that is Hyper Shadic's aura. Once enough rings have been gathered, the two golden orbs in the hedgehog's hands enlarge and merge together into one gigantic sphere in front of his body that he is ready to unleash at any given moment. His body is perfectly braced against the ground, which is the only other thing that the hedgehog had to look out for before he fired off his ultimate attack.

The intense light radiating off of Shadic's body spread out across the whole island, making the place a beacon of hope to all of those panicking on the ground below, and this signal carries out across the world thanks to the newscasters broadcasting this scene from afar in the safety of their copters. With everyone pumping their hands into the air all at once, they declared the name of their saviors with gusto and hope in their hearts, and their cheerful echoes managed to faintly reach the ears of Joe Dark as his orb reached a maximum size that was nearly that of Angel Island itself. "DO YOU THINK YOUR PRAISE AND HOPES TOWARDS THIS MAMMAL WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE?! YOUR FATE HAS BEEN DECIDED, DESOLATION HAS BEEN BROUGHT BY YOUR SO-CALLED HERO, SO REMEMBER THAT WELL AS YOU BURN IN THE DEPTHS OF HELL!"

With one final declaration, Joe Dark unleashed his fully charged orb at the planet, as Shadic simultaneously fired a massive golden beam of energy to meet the attack straight on. The two forces collided in the middle of the sky, releasing a devastating shockwave that shook the planet whole and released a deafening boom that returned everyone to their state of awaiting silence. Shadic's beam condenses into a spherical form at the front to better press against Joe Dark's demonic sphere, while a golden spherical aura surrounds his body and allows him to continue pouring all of his energy into his attack as necessary. At first the two forces prove to be evenly matched in strength, a factor which deeply aggravates Joe Dark from above as he sees his crimson orb being slowly pushed backwards over time, and makes him even more angry than it should have been physically possible for him to be.

With his mouth still agape, he unleashes another ghastly roar, which reaches the depths of Angel Island below Shadic and causes the ground to crack around him. In a matter of seconds, the pale hands of the phantasmal undead reach out from below and wrap themselves around the fused hedgehog's legs. Shadic takes notice of this immediately, but with his concentration focused entirely on his attack he can't afford to take even a moment to look away and deal with the hands without risking the destruction of his world. But because he ignored them, the phantom hands began to drag his body into the ground one inch at a time, and Joe Dark hoped that the loss of balance would prevent Shadic from keeping his attack together.

And the demon would certainly be right in that assumption, as Shadic can already feel the power from his beam diminishing as his shoes are pulled into the ground and his body begins to tilt backwards against its will. Hope was dimming out for Shadic and the world as the orb grew closer and the sky began to be bathed in the crimson glow of death itself, the planet quaking in fear of its own demise as the fused hedgehog gritted his teeth and looked beyond his beam to see the crimson orb bearing down at him with its pulsating demonic glow. "T-There's no way that it will end like this!" Shadic declares in his stuttering mind as he looks deep inside and remembers the people that are hoping for his victory, from his friends on the island to those standing down below, and that along with the final hopeful cries of everyone on the planet allowed Shadic to regain his full strength for just a brief moment and push his entire body forward.

And that brief moment would prove to be all that he would need, as the Super Emeralds and Master Emeralds expend an exceptional amount of energy to help fuel their savior beyond his previous limits, Shadic thrusts both of his palms against the tail end of his beam and pours every single bit of power he has into enlarging his beam three-fold, thus making it large enough for it to be able to push against the demonic orb and send it back towards its creator without either the phantasmal hands on the beast itself being able to do anything to stop this new inevitability. Joe Dark's singular eye widens in shock and fear as he sees his creation heading his way swiftly with a golden pulsating beam trailing it from behind. "No…NO NO NO! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING, YOU SHOULDN'T BE CAPABLE OF SUCH-"

Joe Dark is silenced before his sentence reached an end, as the bottom half of his own orb collided directly with his body, and he is pushed across space with the might of his own attack damaging his blackened flesh severely to the point that it is forcibly discarded and the boy is returned to his normal state of being. But with such a heavy decrease in mass, Joe Dark is pushed away from his demonic orb and sent flying towards the nearby moon, his body crash landing on there beyond the notice of anyone as Shadic's beam carries the crimson orb far away from the planet and causes it to detonate in a glorious explosion of red and gold. In an instant after the beast's disappearance from the sky, the adverse affects to the planet are reversed, leaving nothing but the sun's rays and the blue sky for people to rejoice under as the threat to the planet has been dealt with.

On the grounds of Angel Island, Shadic pulls his arms back into his body and lets out a calming sigh. He had won, but was uncertain about whether or not the boy of darkness had been slain in the process of his victory. He couldn't rely on his senses for this one, especially since they had failed him once before and nearly cost the planet its existence. All Shadic could do was rely on hope, and that such a force would never again appear on this planet. With his purpose now complete, the hedgehog split apart into its two separate components, who both swiftly collapsed on the ground, exhausted from all that they had to do here today, but they would now enjoy the relaxation this moment of peace brought them…

But how long would this peace last, exactly? During this entire battle between the two hedgehogs and the intruder from another world, a certain egotistical if not brilliant scientist had been observing things from a safe distance with the help of his miniature robotic cameras. As the battle came to an end, the scientist guffawed and began tapping away at his keyboard, changing the view in front of him towards one of the cameras that had been positioned around the Master Emerald altar. Peering away from the glow of the emeralds as they reverted back into their regular state of being, the camera focused in on the cave that the boy of darkness had first emerged from.

Typing away for a few more seconds, the display changed to show some readings buried deep within the caves. There was a particular energy signature in the deepest reaches that matched that of the Chaos Emeralds themselves, but it was more abundant in quantity for reasons the good doctor could not quite explain. The rotund man with the iconic black and red scientific getup, bushy brown mustache, and shimmering blue glasses named Eggman smiled and picked up a rather curious looking golden ring into the twiddling grasp of his right fingers and lifted it close to his face. As he looked deep into the reflective surface of the ring, he spoke to it as if someone was listening to him inside "So my troublesome little friend, I hope your claims are as truthful as you say they are…Ohohohoho!"

_This plot point to be continued in "Travels of an Overlord: The Messenger from Nega"…_

_Next Time: Reunion, but not the one he wished for…_


	5. Chapter 5

**Prologue Chapter 5: Prelude to the Black Dawn**

A couple months have passed since the battle on Sonic's world, and the universe has not seen either eye or ear of the boy known as Joe Dark since then. Perhaps that was for the best, perhaps that was for the worst…No one can really say for certain. News did not travel around about the Dark King's return except when it came to the higher cosmic beings in the universe, which is a rather unfortunate thing considering who was traveling about the depths of space at this very moment…You may recognize this fellow, he was the protagonist of the previous part of this story, the clone of the original reincarnation of the Elemental Overlord who goes by the name of Mewmaster…Yes he is named after the author of this tale but I do believe the boy covered most of his views on that at the very start of the last tale…Not that he would likely remember that of course, because at the climax of his story his memories were wiped clean of what had occurred and he was sent back to his home world of Earth with only an inkling of a feeling telling him that something was off.

Anyways, I am getting partially off-subject here. If you wish to know more, go read the prior part of this tale, for exposition is not exactly going to be a strong point for this particular story. The boy with the spiky brown hair, black t-shirt with flame insignia and blue jeans with brown tennis shoes flies across the starry black depths of space…And before the review section is flooded with the one comment about it, the boy has used his elemental powers to wrap himself in a thin veil of air that rejects the crushing pressure of outer space and provides him with a steady enough supply of oxygen so long as he doesn't reject the barrier around him. But just why is the traveling about so far away from the sanctity of his home planet of Earth? (Which of course, is a different one than the one Sonic lives on, and that will be explained later on I assure you.) Well, how about we let the narrative flow naturally now and find out from the mouth of the teenage Overlord himself?

The boy squints his eyelids to look around the beautiful depths of space, his mind filled with innocent almost childlike wonder as the lights reflect into his fascinated pupils and his thoughts drift into a state of pleasure "So many people both young and old probably only dream of flying like this…And yet here I am, flying about like its nothing." Though the young Mewmaster cracks a smile at his almost fantastical journey, he glances forward seriously for but a moment and shifts his mouth to the right before looking diagonally upward and saying in a voice that can only be heard inside of his air veil "Of course, I can't really say 'nothing' considering that if I misplace my thoughts for even a second my only protection against the crushing, oxygen less space around me will break…"

"But it will all be worth it once I find another inhabitable planet out there…Hopefully the people there will be needing a hero to defend them from the evil forces that plague their world." With a smile returning to his face, Mewmaster pressed onward at a slightly faster pace, his eyes shifting back and forth as he tried to seek out a planet from afar. He had already left his solar system behind about a week ago, but wasn't plagued by hunger because he stopped off at a few barren asteroids and propagated some food for him to eat with a combination of his Air, Water, and Nature based powers. Naturally, such nourishment only lasted a few short hours, and it had been such a period of time since he last ate. With his stomach growling to remind him of what he needed to do next, the young Overlord took one last glance across the sky and upon noticing no planets he decided instead to try and find an asteroid to land on.

"There has to be one out here somewhere…I just have to keep looking!" Mewmaster spoke optimistically, a trait of which he was well-noted for amongst his friends back on Earth alongside his rather heroic nature. He liked to fight, but only when it benefited him as far as getting stronger went or if someone truly despicable threatened his friends or the world. He wasn't a very showoff-y kind of guy, which is something admirable to note considering the type of powers he was in control of. Another thing to note is that if it came down to it, he would sacrifice his own life just to give everyone else a chance to live another day…I am getting a bit off-subject again, aren't I? The first sentence was all that was needed for the time being. Let us continue without further interruption…

The boy saw a lone asteroid floating out in the middle of nowhere, and with a smile on his face he dived down towards it after glancing a few more times to make sure that the celestial rock wasn't on a collision course with a nearby planet. Thankfully, it was not, so Mew landed on the asteroid and re-adjusted his air veil and body strength to handle the change in gravity in relation to the asteroid itself. "Alright, its time to get some dirt on the ground to start things off…" Pushing his knuckles out in front of his body, the young Overlord surveyed the landscape and tried to find a good crater so the roots of the trees and plants he'd…well, plant would have enough room to spread their roots around. As he looks southeast of his current location, he notices someone standing alone with his back turned away from him.

"Huh?" Naturally, the young boy is befuddled as to how or why another being was standing around on this asteroid. Even more curious was the fact that he didn't and still couldn't detect the person's presence from afar. "Ho boy…This better not be some type of ghost…" Made a bit uneasy by the lack of energy exuding from the person's spirit, Mewmaster retracted his hands beside his body and calmly crept towards the mysterious figure. Though he could not either detect nor recognize the person's aura, the same did not hold true for them. The person cracked a sadistically joyous smile as he recognized the person approaching him behind, and with a glance to the left of his body he waited for his target to get even closer…

"Hello there!" Mew said out of politeness towards the mysterious figure, and as he waved his right hand into the air he stopped in place ten feet away from the one whose name he did not know to be Joe Dark and watched as said boy turned around at a creeping pace. When he finally faced the young Overlord his smile vanished as he noted something off about the boy standing before him. "Wait a second…You're not…" Joe Dark murmurs that vague comment to himself, his eyes going blank with disappointment as he lowers his hands and takes another look at the young Overlord before noting to himself "Of course, you could have just changed your hair style over the last couple of years…Yes, that makes a lot of sense…"

As the boy of darkness slinked in a natural standing position and a smile crept onto his face, Mewmaster's eyelids blinked voluntarily out of confusion towards the person's strange remarks before he extended one hand out in front of him and asked "I'm sorry, do I know you?" This inquiry caused Joe Dark's eyes to flinch momentarily, especially considering his history with the one called Whiter…If this even was him. The boy of darkness shook his head upon noticing that doubt start to form in his thoughts and he quickly rationalized to himself "This kid does have the Elemental Overlord's powers…But not like that means much considering that other guy I ran into a while back…" As Joe Dark lifted his head up again and watched the one called Mewmaster tilt his head in puzzlement, the boy of darkness found it hard to believe that he was tolerating Whiter's presence for this long, especially considering the lengths he has had to go to see him again.

"Do you seriously not remember me?" Joe Dark tried to ask, hoping that insistence towards getting him to remember would jolt a memory in time. The young Overlord shook his head twice and slowly, and with a gentle raise of his right hand beside his body Mew says with a smile on his face "I really must apologize, but you must have me mistaken for someone else. Though, considering the fact that you are a space traveling human, I don't know how that's really possible…" The boy gave a perfectly honest response towards Joe Dark's question, and that only brought disappointment to the boy of darkness' mind as he lightly scowled and said quietly to the young Overlord as much as it pained him to do so "…That's perfectly fine, sorry for bugging you…"

As Joe Dark appeared ready to turn around and leave this barren asteroid, the Dark King's spirit appears above him and says in a chilling tone that was only loud enough for his host to hear "Don't sell your assumptions short, boy…It is quite possible that our young enemy has come up with a case of amnesia…And perhaps that same event purged the original Overlord's spirit from his body, since I cannot detect him at this very moment." As the boy of darkness listened and took the Dark King's words into consideration, he had not a clue as to the reaction Mewmaster was having towards the sudden appearance of the ghastly spirit above the mysterious boy. With a sudden leap backwards and a swing of his right arm out beside him in a panic the young Overlord drew forth flames around and beyond the front of his palm to materialize a sword with diamond-encrusted ring around the handle that held eight different colored triggers across the surface and held into a pristine steel blade that was half as long as the boy was tall and was an inch thick.

Joe Dark heard the crisping of flames in his eardrums and a grin finally returned to his face as he turned around and saw the defensive stance the young Overlord was taking as he grimaced and looked up at the Dark King's spirit as it glares at him from above the height of his host body. "Interesting…It seems as though the child recognizes me." The malicious spirit noted with a tone of intrigue followed up by a joyous sneer as he floated in place and let Joe Dark handle things from here "What's the matter? It seems as though you've seen a ghost…" The boy of darkness grinned as his eye widened with blood lust and he held his arms out beside his body in anticipation for battle. Ignoring the boy taunt for just a moment, Mewmaster bent down an inch and held his sword at waist length while looking up beyond the flaming gleam of his blade to stare into the eyes of the Dark King's madness.

"H-How are you still around?! The Elemental Overlord sealed you away thousands of years ago!" Mewmaster was a bit unhinged, especially since for what he wanted to be a simple mission to seek out and help those in need in the universe he never expected to run into his antithesis on this lone asteroid. "Hahaha…You truly don't remember anything, do you? As fun as it would be to torment you with the truth, that would rob my host of the chance he has struggled to earn for himself…Do whatever you want, child." Leaving Mewmaster without an answer while simultaneously handing things off to Joe Dark, the Dark King sunk back into his host body and stayed silent for the time being. With a sadistic grin on his face, the boy of darkness creaked his lips open wide and said in a subtle tone of ecstasy "You don't know how long I've waited to do this, WHITER!"

The mention of that name caused Mewmaster to flinch and note to his opponent "Huh, my name isn't Whi-" The second he needed to finish that sentence was interrupted by Joe Dark as his black aura flared up around his body and he immediately rushed across the surface of the asteroid to get with striking range of the young Overlord. With a swing of his blade upward while he straightened his body, Mewmaster blocked the violent flurry of Joe Dark's arms towards his body. The many blows struck all at once, and as the young Overlord braces himself against the ground to avoid being flung away by the weaker gravity he looks up and catches thin ethereal arms branching out from the shoulders of the boy of darkness' body.

After adjusting his strength so gravity wouldn't be too much of a problem anymore, Mew proceeded to fight back against Joe Dark by swinging his sword across the air to launch a furious wave of flame to strike at his foe. "Pathetic and PREDICTABLE…" With annoyed emphasis on the third word in his sentence, Joe Dark held his arms out in front of his body and clamped down onto the crescent of flames with his hands coated in a thin if rather grimy aura. Taking only a second to lightly pull his arms apart, the boy of darkness breaks the attack in two and immediately begins to walk forward while taking in the shock on the young Overlord's face. "Then try this!" Mewmaster finds bravery deep within himself and firms the grasp on his blade before leaping forward into the air and readying his blade in front of his body in a downward position.

Bringing himself down like a hammer in front of the boy of darkness, Mew pours flaming energy deep into the core of the asteroid and waits for it all to mix in with the rocky walls before unleashing it all from the ground in the form of an uncontained eruption that he stood in the center of while the heat of an active volcano poured itself outward towards Joe Dark. But instead of fearing the heat as any mortal would, the new Dark King took his hands in front of him and pushed through the magma like it was water, his thickened aura protecting him from harm as he made his way towards the center of the cascading magma until he reached the vulnerable young Overlord, at which point Mew raised his head in shock and fear while he was kneeled on the ground and quickly pulled his blade out to defend himself, thus ending his previous attack the very moment that Joe Dark lunges his right fist straight out and strikes the dull end of Mew's blade in a failed attempt to plunge his hand into his chest.

Mew holds his ground against the boy of darkness, a move which surprises Joe Dark for the first time this battle and lowers his guard long enough for the young Overlord to perform a sweeping kick empowered by the wind element that trips the boy of darkness up and launches him upward with a burst of air that is released from the tip of Mew's shoe. Following up on this attack by leaping into the air, the young Overlord drew his sword behind his back and readied himself to strike once he saw even a pixel of his foe's eyes. But as Joe Dark's body slowly turned his head followed suit, revealing a widened glare and an equally merciless grin on his face as the boy's tongue slips out between his lips wipes them with one quick sweep before twisting his entire body around like a double-jointed demon and catching the young Overlord entirely by surprise as he charges forward across the air and smashes the top of his skull right into his foe's gut in order to stun him and get him to hack up the first few drops of blood from his mouth.

With the damage done for now satisfying him greatly, Joe Dark pulled back and straightened himself from feet to head like a serpent attempting to stand up, and with a draw of his right hand out beside him the boy calls forth his signature dagger and eerily floats closer to his desired target. Once he is at a range that completely violates the young Overlord's personal space, Joe Dark takes his left hand and flicks the bottom of the boy's chin to push his head up so he can look him straight in the eyes while he floats before him. To make sure everything remains as perfect as he wants it to be in his sadistic little mind, Joe Dark tightly grasps the bottom of Mew's chin with his left hand to keep his head in place while he takes his dear sweet time antagonizing him with a quiet, gruesome whisper of a voice.

"Oh…You really don't know how long I've been yearning to do this for Whiter…To be able to hold your face within my hand once more and see the agony in your eyes as I penetrate your delicate body in all sorts of wonderful places and hear you scream…" As Joe Dark babbled on, Mew weakly opened his eyelids and stared into the boy's face, thinking of only one thing as he waited for the new Dark King to finish his divulgence into his own psychopathic nature, and that was that he had a perfect chance to cleave the boy across the center of his body and end him before he was allowed to do anymore. But no matter how much he tried to swing his blade outward, neither his hand nor the sword itself would budge.

It was as if Mew was too stiff with fear to try and do anything against his opponent, which he found rather foreboding considering how bravely he had handled stronger foes in the past. What made this new Dark King so different from the rest of them that the young Overlord's weapon grasping hand was beginning to quiver unnaturally? It was a deeply concerning question that the boy could not figure out an answer for as he suddenly felt a sharp, agonizing sting of pain pushing through his right shoulder until it reached his brain and commanded him to react with a barely contained cry of pain. He looked straight ahead at Joe Dark, but found that nothing of his had moved since he had begun to question what was going on.

All that changed after that was the boy of darkness' expression, in which his grin curled on both sides as he looked forward and said "Did you feel that? That was my dagger piercing you without even making contact with your body…And you want to know why that was possible? Because it appears as though I am that much stronger than you now, Whiter…I don't even need to TOUCH you to make you feel the pain and agony I want you to experience. Now, where shall I strike next?" As Joe Dark asked that question towards himself, Mew grimaced and grit his teeth while a cold sweat trickled down his head. Once the boy of darkness found a desirable target, his eyes light up menacingly before he whispers to the young Overlord "Here we go…"

Mewmaster can do nothing more than bear through the agonizing brutality of Joe Dark's assault as he punctures through carefully targeted parts of his body with his dagger. From the kneecaps to the elbows, the tendons in his hips to the part of his body between the neck and his chest, Joe Dark leaves no vulnerable muscle untouched until he is completely satisfied. And worst of all? He wasn't inflicting any permanent wounds to the young Overlord's body. Every single bit of pain was just a mental trick played by the new Dark King to make his helpless target fear him, and as another nervous sweat was flung out of Mew's forehead it was clear that his efforts were working well. "Oh come now Whiter…" Joe Dark grinned as he took his left hand and jerked the young Overlord's head forward slightly, his eyes brimming with joyous malice as he finishes his sentence with "Can you not bear through this?"

As Mew stares at the boy of darkness at eye level with his mouth panting and the sweat threatening to dampen his hair style, the young Overlord fought through the excruciating pain and said to Joe Dark "M-My name is not Whiter…I-Its Mewmaster…You have me mistaken for s-someone else…" Upon hearing the true name of his opponent coupled with the prior revelation that despite having the Elemental Overlord's energy signature this person did not know who he was, Joe Dark's eyebrows sink in subdued disappointment as he slowly drew his left hand away from Mewmaster's face and let it sink down on its own once more. But after a few calming seconds where the young Overlord prepares to take matters into his own hand and cut Joe Dark in two, the new Dark King's eyes widen in fury before he raises his right hand across the front of his body and swings his backhand out to strike Mew across the face while his angered growl slowly increases in volume as the young Overlord is smashed against the floor of the asteroid without so much as a struggle to break his descent.

Nothing breaks apart on the ground after the impact because of how strong the asteroid itself is, but Mew feels a few bones cracking in his right arm as he skids across for a few feet before stopping suddenly with the side of his face lying against the floor and the rest of his body feeling limp in place as the grip on his sword loosens and the blade clinks against the cold, rocky ground. With the back of his knuckles red due to how hard he hit the young Overlord, Joe Dark holds his striking arm in front of his chest while looking down at his stiff foe in utter disdain. He then extends his arm out beside himself and glares furiously at him, expressing his emotions towards Mew by saying "There is one thing I haven't mistaken for you at the very least…A complete and utter waste of my time. Farewell, faker…"

Joe Dark turned around and began to float away from the asteroid, and he would have paid Mew no more attention had it not been for the sound of metal scraping against the ground that made him realize, as annoying as it appeared to be, that the young Overlord was getting back up ready to keep on fighting. With only a glance over his shoulder to show just how little he cared for such a display, Joe Dark watched as the kid got to his feet while using his sword as a support until he stood up all the way, though it was easy to see that his muscles were aching due to his impact with the ground and the damage to his arm was making it difficult for him to hold onto his sword without groaning in pain. "Y-You aren't going anywhere…" Mewmaster tries to bravely force the new Dark King to stick around despite the person's insistence that he had no reason to fight him now.

Joe Dark turned around and looked at the weakening Mewmaster with a firm glare in his eyes as he stated in bold "Did you not hear me? You are a complete and utter waste of my time…And you want to know exactly why that is? Personally, I don't care to know why you have the Elemental Overlord's powers yet fail to recognize me or the name Whiter, but the fact remains that you do have those powers which means I've already fought somebody who can use them…With how weak you are there is literally no way for you to defeat me even if you used your Phoenix Form. There is nothing you can pull to surprise me, which is why I'm being lenient here in letting you live…And you have to realize how hard it is for me to show such restraint considering you wear _his_ face."

At the end of Joe Dark's calm, rational explanation, Mewmaster smirks underneath the shadow cast by his hair and lifts his head up to look the boy of darkness straight on. "You think I give a damn about your strength?" He bravely declares. "Yeah, its true that you are pretty strong, and perhaps you should be commended for giving me a challenging fight…But you are using your strength for the entirely wrong reasons. You can't just go around sadistically torturing and killing anyone as you see fit just because you can…Its not morally right, and I'm not just going to stand idly by and let you escape into the deep black yonder just so you can repeat what you did to me on this 'Whiter' person!"

"…Hmph, it appears as though the face isn't the only similarity between you and him…Naivety is as deep rooted into your heroic nature as it is in Whiter's…But very well, if you are so insistent on combating me, then you better have something up your sleeve I've never seen before!" As Joe Dark re-ignites his aura of piercing darkness, Mewmaster smiles and swings his sword out beside his body despite how much his face twitched from the pain. With a confident glimmer in his eyes the young Overlord moved his fingers towards a sparkling white trigger on the eastern edge of his sword's handle and declared "Oh, I'll show you something different! After all, you were wrong to assume that my Phoenix Form is my final form! Bring Judgment to those Impure and Malignant! Trigger: Light Form!"

_Next Time: Light to Darkness_


	6. Chapter 6

**Prologue Chapter 6: Hikari to Yami**

With a pull of the glowing trigger, Mew is bathed in an aura of purifying light as a smile crosses his face and a holy wind sweeps across the ground in front of his body. The wind expands outward, blowing against the space dust built up on the asteroid to create a sharp, sparkling crescent of light at the tip of Mew's shoes as regular light stretches out from his slowly transfiguring glowing blade and spirals around the circumference of his arm until it taps against the part of his back below the shoulder blades, at which point all of the young Overlord's clothes are broken off and instantly replaced with a glowing white veil while some of the straggling light solidifies into the form of a wide pair of angelic wings on his backside.

As the pressure exuding from the holy wind doubles and Mewmaster's hair flies around uncontrollably, Joe Dark's eyes widen in curious surprise at the scene he was witnessing before him as the Dark King's spirit appeared for a moment and slanted his eyelids to avoid being blinded as he spoke to his host body "Interesting…So this child acquired the Overlord's Light Reserve…This was unprecedented…" "But still not concerning…" Joe Dark says with reassurance in his voice after the sentence of his shadow had passed, and as the boy grit his teeth he saw the young Overlord's transformation come to a swift yet brilliant end. The light shattered across the air as Mew swung his newly formed diamond thick katana around in a circle and sheathed the blade beside his right hip.

Having now been endowed with a majestic holy warrior garb that combined a white and black steel samurai's upper body armor with the silky smooth white robe of a resident of heaven itself buried underneath it and a similar cloth covering his legs, Mew looks forward at Joe Dark and sees the boy of darkness relaxing his lips muscles into a smile before saying "Well I must admit, I definitely never saw anything like this from Whiter…" "Of course not, because I'm not him." Mewmaster rebuttals, to which Joe Dark smirks and says in turn while stretching his arms out beside himself and landing onto the ground of the asteroid with a swift burst of speed "Perhaps you will prove to be more enterta-"

The young Overlord wasn't playing around anymore after seeing what the boy of darkness was capable of. At the very moment when Joe Dark appeared straight ahead of him, Mew leaped across the air like a streak of lightning and took his katana out from his holster, swinging the blade with one delicate cut aimed for his opponent's neck only to miss completely as the boy of darkness widens his eyes in reaction to the speed and his body fizzles with darkness as he quickly steps back out of range of the blade's tip and draws forth his dagger to block another attack that was launched straight at him as Mew flew forward to face him.

When the two sharp forces collide, the shockwave of darkness released from Joe dark's weapon is barely noticeable behind the large ring of light that resounds from Mew's blade. The young Overlord flips himself around, retracting his wings to prevent them from being attacked as he lunges forward and flips himself around to position his feet towards the ground and land gently. With a stern focus onto his blade, Mew creates a veil of light around it and slashes across the air the very moment that Joe Dark begins to turn around. Sensing one crescent slash of pure light coming towards him via the foreboding raising of the hair on his arms, the boy of darkness swerves to the right and lifts himself off the ground an inch to avoid the light.

However, it was only a brief avoidance as another crescent strikes Joe Dark straight on without so much as another warning allowing him a chance to get away. Mewmaster's slashes were too quick for his opponent to predict, which allowed him to pull off a second attack in the same second it took him to unleash his first one. The light reacts unfavorably with Joe Dark's aura, the black veil fizzling about until its burned through completely and the boy is left vulnerable to further strikes from his vastly maneuverable foe. With the light having pushed him back a foot or two, Joe Dark regains a foothold on the air and swings his arms out wide to firm his muscles and create two frantic orbs of darkness in both of his hands.

The crimson orbs release black dispersions of energy in the form of entangled lightning that crackles in front of his face as he grins, and with rapid thrusts of his arms that cross the front of his chest Joe Dark unleashes a volley of dark spheres towards his foe while releasing a quiet if maniacal bit of laughter. His eyes widen to match his frenzied emotional state even when the orbs zip on by the swiftly moving Elemental Overlord and crash into the ground, as the bloody flashes of light from the detonations resonate inside of Joe Dark's eyes and continue to increase his excitement for this battle. That is, until Mew gets within one foot of his body with his sword slowly being drawn away from the side of his left hip ready to cut the boy of darkness down, at which point Joe Dark stiffens his expression into a more stoic state of being while ducking down to narrowly avoid the blade.

Mew's pupils become more focused and his eyes more widened as he completes his swing, and with a quick glance downward he sees Joe Dark creating a portal of darkness to escape since standing straight up wouldn't likely be possible due to the position of his foe. But with a stamp of his foot, the young Overlord spread light out from his sandal that covered the growing portal and sealed it up before it could reach its maximum size, a move that could only disappoint Joe Dark for a second before he ate a holy empowered kick from Mew's left foot. The boy of darkness was launched across the air with his face sizzling from the purity making contact with his malignant skin, while Mew quickly swung his sword outward to launch another crescent wave that met his foe in mid-air and struck him so hard that that the ensuing almost supernova-like explosion of light launched him to the ground in a second.

Joe Dark was battered against the hardened surface of the asteroid, his body rising back up thanks to the fact that he hadn't adjusted to the shift in gravity yet, but such a thing mattered little to the young Overlord when it gave him another chance to attack the new Dark King. With a burst of speed that was kept in the air by a glowing streak behind him, Mew appeared beside the limp Joe Dark as the boy creaked his eyelids open and tilted his head to catch a glimpse of his foe for the brief moment that he was beside him, for in the span of a second the young Overlord brings his sword down horizontally across Joe Dark's body, the cleaving force of an immeasurable amount of light cutting deep into the darkness buried within the boy and causing his eyes to widen and freeze up in surprise and pain before Mew stopped a few feet away from the falling Joe Dark and cut the air behind him to complete the cross of light by simply swinging his blade backwards with his right arm.

The boy of darkness is pinned to the ground by the descending cross, and despite the feeling in Joe Dark's guts blood was not pouring out of him quite yet. It was a rather disturbing thing to take into consideration for the boy, as he thought to himself "Have I become so consumed by darkness that my organs and bodily fluids have been replaced by it? …Whatever the case may be, this 'light' element is still as annoying to deal with as it was back then…" With a struggling thrust of his right hand, Joe Dark let out an empowering roar before unleashing a strong shockwave of darkness from the palm that cracked the light pinning him down and broke it apart enough for the boy of darkness to roll away before the remainder of the cross could pin him back down. He had to grimace in pain though due to rolling across his stomach for just a brief moment, but he was thankful to not be at the young Overlord's mercy…

"Not bad Whiter, but now you will witness true power at my ha-" As Joe Dark speaks while getting back onto his feet, the mention of that one name along with the threat of being shown the new Dark King's true power got Mew motivated enough to dash on ahead and check the boy in the neck with the might of his left gauntlet. Were it not for his durability, Joe Dark's head would have been blown clean off by this lariat, but instead the boy of darkness merely suffers a brief if not disorienting loss of air as he is slammed head first against the ground by Mew's arm. The young Overlord then leaps back as the dust from Joe Dark's impact falls to the ground around him nice and slowly, where he then stands in place and waits for him to get back up and fight him again. Instead of continuing the fight though, the boy of darkness gets back onto his feet and coughs heavily due to the dust around him as he recovers from his loss of breath. "A-Are you kidding me? What do you think you are doing?!"

Confused by the new Dark King's disgust towards him, Mewmaster gently raise his right eyebrow while stating the obvious to him "You were about to transform, so I stopped you." "W-What?! But isn't it an honorary custom amongst warriors to let the other change form if necessary?!" Joe Dark was frantically trying to cope with the fact that the young Overlord wasn't as dimwitted as he appeared to be…Or perhaps not as honorable in battle as Whiter was, but either way Mew simply smiled and said "Are you kidding me? Of course it isn't…" With the boy's blatant response ringing in his ears, Joe Dark scowled and bent forward like a goblin as he responded with disgust "Well forgive me for assuming the contrary because of how others have reacted towards my transformations…" "Well I guess those people are idiots then, aren't they?" Unaware of just who he ended up insulting with that sharp witted rebuttal, Mewmaster takes his katana and lashes it down against the ground beside him ready to continue the fight, a notion which Joe Dark doesn't take too kindly too now that he'll have a more difficult time getting into his other form.

With a leap back into the air, Joe Dark launches a barrage of energy blasts from his hands to try and confuse his opponent while simultaneously looking out for any moments of weakness that he can take advantage of. Mew zips back and forth between the field of miniature darkness comets until he reaches the back end of the attack, which puts him at about a five foot gap away from the boy of darkness. "Shit…" Joe Dark flinches as he finds himself feeling too uncomfortably close to his opponent for his liking and with firm grasp of his right fingers the boy compiles as much darkness as possible and launches it into the ground so the impact will great a plume of dust big enough to conceal his body and prevent the young Overlord from just charging straight at him.

Thinking he was safe to transform, Joe Dark bent forward and prepared to go through the necessary procedures, but with a flinch from his eyes he sensed Mewmaster appearing behind him without any other warning. The young Overlord dived straight down diagonally and kicked Joe Dark in the center of his spine to deal the most damage and plow him straight into the ground as the two rapidly descended from the air. Joe Dark is brought face first into the asteroid as Mew lifts his sword above him to prepare for the next attack, which he performs with a vivacious slash across the air to unleash yet another crescent wave of light down onto the boy of darkness' back to take advantage of his clear weakness once more.

Joe Dark was riled with all the pain going through his body at that immediate moment, but endured it all simply so he could get a grand opportunity to transform. He laid against the ground, his backside fizzling in agony as Mew stays high above the air with his wings taking steady flaps with each passing second. "Give up, I won't let you transform!" Speaking with confidence instead of arrogance, Mew holstered his katana for a moment as Joe Dark turned his head to the side and grit his teeth in annoyance before noting to his opponent "You…You won't have a choice in the matter…" He then raised his left hand below his chin with darkness slipping out between the fingers, and with one mighty roar he pounded all the energy pooled together against the ground to create a burst of darkness powerful enough to catch Mew off-guard and cover Joe Dark's body via a combination of the dark field of energy and the dust that rose up from the asteroid.

Sensing something amiss behind the energy field, Mew clenches his teeth and dashes forward with sword at the ready in his right hand, but as he swung through the field his blade made contact only with the ground instead of any flesh. Joe Dark had managed to slip through his gaze via a portal of darkness, as evidenced by the traces of energy fizzling out of existence on the ground. With a sharp, unnerving feeling pushing through his brain, Mew swiftly turns around and finds Joe Dark curling up with his body breaking apart one molecule at a time. It was too late to stop him from transforming, especially once the bestial frame of darkened flesh began to form around Joe Dark's slipping body. A series of howling spirits merge into the center of this frame as the asteroid begins to rumble and the full form of the monstrosity begins to solidified into a cohesive shape. With a wavy black, purple and white ethereal texture appearing across the creature's skin, Mew could only watch as the front of the beast's face split open like a dimensional gap to reveal a fleshy white eye with a hellfire red and yellow iris.

The beast crashed against the asteroid, a shockwave of pure darkness flowing out from his feet as the talons dig into the ground ready to charge. Mew stood bravely against the beast while holding his katana beside his body and turning himself to the right slightly as he waits for the beast to make the first move. But the young Overlord couldn't have possibly calculated what was about to happen, as with a single raise of his beastly left foot Joe Dark quickly appeared a few feet before Mew with his head already bent down to ram his foe straight in the gut, knocking him right out of his stance and dragging him along in the air against his will with his wings bent out beside his body and his sword barely grasped in his hand.

Once he had gotten far enough across the asteroid, Joe Dark let go of Mew and shot a swift flash of crimson darkness from his pupil to strike the young Overlord through his armor without touching the flesh underneath it. Mew's body is suspended in the air with steam emerging from where he was struck, and after two seconds he falls to the ground with a sudden thud. The young Overlord's eyes widened in disbelief from how painful the darkness was, as if it had pierced him down to his very soul without so much as an effort spared by Joe Dark himself. It was especially concerning to Mew because he was under the assumption that his light aura diluted the power of darkness that went for his body…Or maybe this pain was a testament to just how powerful Joe Dark's gruesome darkness was against him now.

Either way, Mew pushes his left hand against the ground and slowly picked his body back up, using his sword as a cane of sorts until his feet both touched the ground below him and he was able to leap back to continue the fight against the beast. With a flap of his wings, the young Overlord launched a barrage of light shrouded feathers that peck against the front of Joe Dark's face and makes him flinch rather briefly and close his eyelid to protect himself, while in his mind the boy of darkness knew this attack wreaked of distraction. Sure enough, as he opened his eyelid enough to get a grasp on what his opponent was doing, he saw the pillar-ish glimmer of Mew's blade rocketing straight off into space without any foreseeable end.

Without so much as hesitation in his battle furious eyes, Mew brought the blade of infinite light crashing down upon Joe Dark's hulking body, the asteroid feeling the full brunt of divine judgment as all of the compacted energy exploded in the form of a radiant, neon wall that very nearly split the celestial rock in two as it consumed the beast whole. With his katana gripped in both hands at that very moment, Mew pulled his blade away from the tail end of the light and let go with his left hand so he could swing the sword out beside him, where a few sparkles trickled off the tip of his blade and fell onto the ground. The young Overlord glared at the wall of light as it slowly faded out of existence, his eyes peering deep into it to see even an inkling of Joe Dark's figure beyond it all, but was both surprised yet fearful of the fact that he wasn't there.

As the wall of light faded away and left a deep, permanent gash within the asteroid's near invulnerable surface, a cold, demonic chill crept through Mew's wings and spine as his eyes simultaneously widened in disbelief as he sensed Joe Dark's presence floating in place behind his body without so much as any other prior warning. The young Overlord quickly turned around and attempted to cut the beast across the face with a mere swing of his sword, but a thick tendril lashed out and wrapped around his weapon grasping arm to stop him and his sword mere inches away from the blade making contact with the skin. After that it only takes five more seconds for multiple more tendrils to appear and wrap themselves around various parts of Mew's body up to and including the membranes connecting his wings to his back.

Naturally, a sharp pain thrusts itself through the young Overlord's body as he is forcibly hoisted into the air before Joe Dark's face, helpless as the demon bellows deeply and laughs right into Mew's trembling face. "I have you entirely at my mercy…" Joe Dark's eyelid folds inward to show displeasure at the fact that he has the young Overlord secured right before his very eyes. It just wasn't satisfactory to him to have so easily turned the tables on this false version of Whiter, and as Joe Dark is reminded of the ecstasy he felt when he faced Whiter so long ago…along with the pleasure he felt towards unleashing his new power on those two irritating hedgehogs even if he did end up losing that fact, made the demon realize just how bland and uninterested he was in this conflict and felt that the correct course of action would be to show-

In a sudden, surprising move from the young Overlord, Joe Dark watches as he takes his own blade and struggles to turn it around towards himself with the blade tip glowing brightly with the holy energy needed to break through the tendrils wrapped around his chest. But it was not that action alone that did surprised the demon, but rather the lengths Mew was going through in order to break himself out of these limbs of darkness. He swiped the air upwards, cutting through the very center of all the tendrils deeply to the point that he actually cut through his own armor and drew blood from his chest. Still, with the tendrils loosened, Mew cared little about his self-inflicted pain as he tightened his muscles and released a swift burst of light that melted the limbs down to their primordial elements and left the young Overlord with enough room to fly backwards as pure hardened light fix the crack in his armor.

He was still bleeding externally, but at least the wound couldn't be taken advantage of now that the armor had been fixed. With an irritated look in his eye, Joe Dark murmured to himself "Futile…Pitifully, futile…" Before watching as the frightened and somewhat angered Mew floated in the air with his katana grasped in front of his waist. "Time to end this and move on…" With a single, uninspired roar, Joe Dark leaps into the air and gashed the sky with his talons to create multiple other gashes all across the depths of space while simultaneously leaping into the first gash that he had created. Mew nervously swerved his head back and forth to try and peg where the demon would emerge from, since if he got the first strike against Joe Dark he might be able to do something despite the differences in strength between the two of them.

But alas, Joe Dark knew how perceptive the new Elemental Overlords were when it came to the heat of battle, and without emerging from his pocket dimension he let out an echoing roar to break all the remaining gashes so they would unleash a hailstorm of dimensional shards down upon Mew continuously and rapidly. This was a type of attack that could not be guarded against by anything that the young Overlord had in his arsenal…He had to endure countless seconds of pain and agony as the shards punctured through his armor and went deep into his skin, breaking through many nerve endings and veins, the second of the two causing blood to follow the shards through the holes on the other side of Mew's body. Eventually the bombardment comes to an end, but not before the young Overlord is forced onto his knees with both hands barely pressing against the end of his katana's handle as a means of support.

His wings, now plastered with holes of various shapes and sizes, fall limp to the ground and some of the feathers become blood red thanks to the bodily liquids that leaked out from Mew's body. Though the sweet freedom of death would be more than satisfying right now to any mere mortal who endured through that onslaught, the young Overlord still struggles to get back onto his feet and continue this futile battle, which only further fueled Joe Dark's disgust as he emerged from one more gash while exclaiming in tired rage "ENOUGH!" His hulking body landed behind the fear frozen Mew, the asteroid trembling from the might of the mass that impacted it. As he slowly turns his head around, the young Overlord is rammed in the backside by Joe Dark's head, and his body is launched forward far away from where the demon currently stands.

After a few spirals in mid-air, the young Overlord falls to the ground, his body laid flat out on his slowly bleeding stomach as he loses his grip on his sword and his angelic wings appear broken across his back. With one angered roar Joe Dark stamps his right foot against the ground and exclaims towards the beaten and nearly unconscious Mewmaster "How dare you try and mock me with your weak display of might! You may wear his face, you may have some of his powers, and you show his irritating sense of determination…But in the end, you are nothing compared to Whiter, you damned, insolent little clone!" Upon hearing that last word, Mew's eyelids widen and break through the tension in his muscles that had been brought on by fear and doubt in himself. But more than that…Something inside of the young Overlord snapped, and something else that he knew nothing about paid attention to the breaking of his host's fragile psyche…

"W-What did you call me?" Mew said as he slowly lifted his head up off the ground and glares deep into the demonic eye of Joe Dark, an action which both surprised yet deeply infuriated the beast. "A clone, a replica, a fake, and a damned mockery of the ecstasy I obtained from facing Whiter in mortal, blood engorging combat! …You are nothing compared to him, you have nothing that is unique to yourself besides that Light Form, which you barely even managed to scratch me with…" As Joe Dark continued to speak uninterrupted, Mew's eyes widen with furious, maddening intent inside of them before he yelled out with all of his remaining might "That's not true! I'm my own person, I'm not a clone!" _"Yes…Get angry at him, lash your tongue out like a wretched serpent and bite down into him with your words…"_

"OPEN YOUR DAMN EYES YOU FOOL! Do you think I would be wasting my time mincing my words with you if you were truly the original Whiter?! Accept your fate, you are nothing more than a clone!" _"Are you truly going to take that from him? He is questioning your identity…Your very existence down to the last straggling fiber of your fleeting being…And you are just going to lay on the ground like the pitiful worm he claims you are and take it?!" _Unaware yet subtly influenced by a raspy, demonic voice inside of his subconscious, Mew responds to Joe Dark's words with even more fury in his tone as his eyes become bloodshot out of pure rage "SHUT UP! I AM THE ORIGINAL REINCARNATION OF THE ELEMENTAL OVERLORD!" _"Yes, that's more like it…Scream as though every word will be your last! Strain your vocal cords if you must, but never relent!" _"This is pitiful…I have no reason to stick around anymore. I will leave you forever blinded by your insolence…Bleeding to death alone on this miserable asteroid that you have chosen as your gravesite…Farewell, faker."

As the lumbering beast known as Joe Dark slowly starts to turn around, Mew's breaths become vapid while his eyes become almost primal in nature, and with one last edging from the voice in his subconscious _"He is going to get away…Don't let him go without an echo to remember you by…" _The young Overlord declares at the top of his lungs "GET BACK HERE AND FACE ME YOU DEGENERATE, DEMONIC SON OF A BIT-" As a sharp bit of pain thrusts through Mew's brain, the young Overlord is suddenly silenced as his pupils shrink and his eyes slowly spin around back into his head against their will. Then, there is an unnatural calm in the air as Joe Dark is forcibly frozen in place by the Dark King's spirit.

"What are you doing?" The boy of darkness asks the lingering spirit in confusion. "…I-It couldn't be…" The Dark King, unnerved by the sudden appearance of a ghastly yet all too familiar presence, has Joe Dark turn himself around so he could face the young Overlord…But what he saw both frightened and gravely concerned him at the same time. Mew had been dragged into the air by an unknown force, his armor slowly disintegrating to leave him back in his normal clothing as the sword on the asteroid shatters out of existence while making a piercing sound similar to that of a supernova exploding. All across the young Overlord's body, the many holes in his skin begin to leak an ethereal, blackened gas that heals the wounds while concurrently spread around the boy's figure to create a thin aura that covers all the limbs and forms three elongated claws beyond the tightened fists and in front of the boy's shoes. A painful cracking noise is heard coming from the back, as without any logical explanation bones are starting to grow that the human body isn't normally capable of producing, these abnormal bones piercing their way through the delicate membranes while forcibly molting the feathers off of there as they are replaced with a netted up bundle of rigid bones that are perfectly shaped into a pair of demonic wings on the boy's back.

At the end of the wings' creation, the body slowly begins to descend back onto the asteroid, where the legs then bend halfway down and the rest of the body hunches over like a gargoyle's would. The head of the young Overlord then lifts up as the hair morphs from brown to black in a matter of seconds from the center outwards, and the eyes are covered by a ghostly dark yellow glow. The Dark King's spirit looked at the boy in utter disbelief, but recognized the figure not as who he was before, but someone else entirely… "It…It is you…" The being who appears to have possessed Mewmaster looks towards the two figures, his eyes able to perceive both planes of existence as he opens his mouth in a raspy voice that was entirely his own and said to the Dark King with a livid, fanged grin on his face "Hello once again, my liege…"

_Next Time: Darkness, Destruction, Death…_


	7. Chapter 7

**Prologue Chapter 7: Burial of the Black Knight**

"_What troubles you, sire?" A black ethereal spirit without a definable form asks in a mocking, raspy tone of voice towards the black armored man known as the Dark King as he stands at the edge of a cliff side as night falls upon a village covered in shadows by the mountains that surrounded it. "…What do you want?" The man showed slight irritation towards the spirit, especially as it flew through the air like a swift serpent to the front of his line of sight with his ghastly fanged grin peering through the foggy black mess that was his body. "Oh, you know exactly what I want to do my 'lord'…But I also know that you won't give me permission to do so." "…Then why do you waste my time perched about in the air, phantom?" The Dark King inquires with annoyance in his voice as he turns his body partially to the side and began to walk away from the cliff._

"_Oh my 'lord', if my thoughts were so easily explained, then I wouldn't be able to torment you or anyone else with the truth I keep hidden within me. Though I believe you are tormented enough as is, what with you wanting to declare war on the Elemental Overlord and all." The phantom floats through the air, leaving behind faint traces of darkness in the form of a trail of specks as he moves to the front of the Dark King's body while noting the grimace on his rugged face and decreasing the width of his grin for a brief moment to deceive his 'lord' in regards to his feelings. Raising his right eyebrow in annoyance towards the spirit, the man pauses for a moment before continuing forward undeterred and saying towards the black spirit "It is a necessary evil…"_

"_Of course it is my 'lord'…" The ethereal being spoke with a lack of belief in his 'lord's' reason in his tone of voice, for in the end he knew the true purpose behind the Dark King's decision to declare war on the Elemental Overlord. "The Elemental Overlord is blind to the truth that the higher-ups have been keeping hidden from him, and this war is the only way to get him to see what needs to be done to fix this stagnant universe." The Dark King states with absolutely honest as he clenches both of his fists and begins to traverse down the hillside ready to return to his village and lead his people to war. "You are not fooling the wiser amongst us, sire…Making the Overlord see the truth is one of your reasons, yes…But in the end, its all about her, isn't it?"_

_The Dark King freezes in place after the spirit questions his reasons with a foolish amount of gall in his voice, and with a slight turn of his head the ethereal being catches a glimpse of the angered madness in his 'lord's' left eye as he spoke deeply yet calmly to the spirit "Still your tongue, cretin, lest I banish your soul a world even more gruesome than the netherworld for all eternity…" The spirit merely grins at the prospect stated by his 'lord' and responded as honestly as he could muster "Oh I would surely love to see you try and believe that such a thing would be a suitable punishment for my malicious behavior…But I am being quite honest here. You are truly going to send your people into a war that will more than likely erupt into a bloodbath amongst both sides simply to claim the love of a single woman?"_

"…_The Overlord did nothing to earn her hand…Their union was forced upon them by the celestial sages in order to ensure peace between the Overlord's tribe and hers. She doesn't truly love him, she is just faking affection in order to keep the deal secure…But once the Overlord is defeated in mortal combat, the erroneous arrangement will be revoked by the sages and her love will be mine alone…" The spirit smiled as the Dark King laid out his plans, and he soon thought to himself "You are delusional if you believe that things are that way…In fact, you are just as blind as the Elemental Overlord is…But so long as I get to take part in the bloodshed, then who am I to care about my 'lord's' petty lover issues?"_

"_Oh, by the way sire…" The spirit says to the Dark King, only for his question to be answered before it was fully asked "Yes, you shall partake in this battle…I have already secured a corpse for you to possess that should prove efficient in your endeavors…The Elemental Overlord is mine though. Interfere and perish, shadow…" The Dark King slowly walks off after loosening his fists, his cape swaying in the cold breeze as the spirit floats ominously in the air and says to himself "You have already sealed your fate my 'lord'…And if the Elemental Overlord fails to finish you off, then I will be lying in wait to do the job for him…After all, I know for a fact that the Overlord will show mercy towards you, especially considering your past ties…Now then, its time for battle…" With his plans detailed only to himself, the spirit moves across the air towards the village where his new body awaited him…_

Back in the present day, the dark spirit that once stood by the side of the Dark King, albeit with only a semblance of loyalty towards his 'lord', now stands far before him in possession of the young Elemental Overlord Mewmaster's body. His first thrust through the weakened subconscious of his target cursed the Overlord's body and caused it to take on a more otherworldly appearance, with boney wings and ethereal black claws on both his hands and feet along with his glowing ghastly yellow eyes piercing deep into the beating souls of his prey. But instead of expressing malice towards the Dark King despite the agony he endured for the past two-thousand years of his imprisonment, the being's first words upon reawakening in this new body is to greet his former 'lord'.

Joe Dark, confused by the new being that stood before him, did manage to take note of just who the spirit was directing his greeting to and as he kept his eye focused on the creature possessing the young Overlord he spoke to the Dark King's shadow within his mind. "Who is this wretched hellspawn? And how does he know you?" The Dark King's spiritual face grimaces, and with an annoyed whisper in his tone of voice he replies "He is…'D.'" "D as in…?" Joe Dark asks under the assumption that there was more to the name than just a single letter. "…His existence cannot be described in just one word. He is a complicated being that existed long before the Elemental Overlord and I were brought into this world, but there is one thing that he has made clear to us all…He loves destruction, death, despair, desolation, depression, and many other dreadful concepts that only pure sadists would truly find pleasure in experiencing…All of his likes have one common theme in that they all start with the letter 'D', so we found that it was simpler to call him that instead of pegging down one particular word to use with him."

Glaring straight at the demon possessing Mew, Joe Dark sees his brimming grin and quickly realizes just how much truth the Dark King's statement held. "…I see. And yet he calls you his king, why?" His question was derived from the fact that from the brief description the Dark King gave him, it sounded as though the demon wasn't really one that would willing be tied down to any one master. "He is…or rather was my second-in-command a long time ago. He didn't really respect me, and whenever he calls me his 'lord' its merely an act of mockery. But in the end only my powers allowed me to hold his malicious spirit back from performing any truly grave misdeeds across the universe, unlike my lenient counterpart…"

"Then what is stopping him from killing me right here and now?!" The boy of darkness blurts out in a cold panic. Rational for the time being though, the Dark King says to his host body "Not necessarily…I'm still around you, and he CAN see me…So long as he believes that you are as strong as I was in my prime, then I see no reason for him to try and strike against us." "And what about Whiter's clone?" Joe Dark asks with a surprisingly high amount of concern towards the possessed young Overlord. "You truly care about the child's safety despite his relation?" The Dark King says with a laugh and a tone of surprise in the midst of his sentence. With a quick glare towards the boy before he looked back at the Dark King's spirit, Joe Dark replied "He knows nothing about the conflict between me and his real self…Besides…I sort of pity the child for his weakness."

"Also, we can't let the demon be, can we?" Moving onto a different subject, Joe Dark listens to the Dark King as he murmurs and looks towards 'D.' as he continues to stand eerily still on the ground in front of the two figures. Eventually, the shadow behind Joe Dark responds by saying "…We have no choice, really. There are currently only two ways in the universe to purge D. from his host…One is that if he goes willingly, which we both know is likely not going to happen…And the second method requires the use of a particular type of flame that only one person in the universe has the ability to use anymore…And as luck would have it, he was sealed away by the Elemental Overlord and I have no idea just where his cage is at the moment." The boy of darkness scowls inside of his mind and turns back towards the possessed young Overlord in reality with his mind still curious about just why 'D.' was staying quiet for such an obscenely long period of time.

"Cretin, why are you here?" Joe Dark asks with little respect towards the vile monstrosity in hopes of learning even a bit about just how 'D.' came to possess Mew. With a sly grin on his face, the demon spoke in a raspy combination of his voice and the body he possessed, his eyes releasing a brief glow as he lifts his head up and looks straight at the beast before him. "I was freed from my bonds by an unknown source but found that my powers had been weakened immensely by the continuous exposure to the elemental chains…So I traveled to a nearby planet to seek out a suitable host, and low and behold I found this vessel…Unfortunately, I was forced away from the subconscious by the Light Reserve buried within his mind, so I had no choice but to bide by time away from thought until the child got angry enough to pollute his concentration and give me an open passageway to slip some of my own consciousness into him and take partial control of his body. Irritatingly enough for me though, I cannot seem to access my full power at the moment…In time though, we shall see if it all returns."

'D.' looks up at Joe Dark and forces himself to stand upright, his eyes gazing deep into the thickened darkness surrounding the beast until he sees the radiating red core that was the figure of the boy of flesh and bone himself. With a grin still on his face the demon chuckles deeply and says to his company "The bestial form is rather familiar…But the person inside is not. Am I right to assume that you are the one who was prophesized to inherit the powers of my former 'lord'?" The demon was being surprisingly casual if rather creepy in his conversation with Joe Dark, which threw the boy entirely off-guard for a moment as he widened his eye in surprise and proceeded to say with caution still rooted into his mind "That I am…" "I see…" 'D.' says with intrigue that slipped right off his now prehensile tongue.

"Then am I also not right to assume that you should also have the strength and integrity the former Dark King once carried on his shoulders?" As the demon continued to speak, he slowly paced himself across the asteroid, his body creeping forward one inch at a time as a ghastly aura began to surround his body in contrast to the deceptive, innocent look in his expression. Joe Dark felt a bit nervous as 'D.' drew ever closer, but kept his composure after a mental nudge from the original Dark King himself. The demon stood in place six feet away from Joe Dark's otherworldly form, his limbs becoming stiff and motionless as he looked into the boy's reddened eye and asked him in a daring tone "Do you have what it takes to tame someone like me?"

It was a daunting question, one meant to force Joe Dark to reveal his true emotions towards the demon and make him a target of his incomprehensible malice. And under any other circumstances, the boy could have actually stood bravely against such a powerful inquiry…But 'D.' was different. In the face of this demon's chaotic nature, Joe Dark felt like a whimpering little child deep down inside of himself. The Dark King, seeing that his host body was about ready to snap, acted quickly to reassure him by pointing out "Stand your ground child…If you answer without any hints of nervousness, you will earn his allegiance for the time being…" After the Dark King has finished his whisper, he stays in the air and turns towards his former second-in-command only to find that something strange has happened to his expression.

The demon seemed ecstatic, his eyes focused away from Joe Dark's face and up into the air precariously to the assumption of the Dark King at first. But as the grin of 'D.' widened subtly, the shadow realized a grave truth far too late "H-He kno-" With a sudden raise of his right hand and a thrust of his ethereal claws across the cold depths of space, the demon makes contact with the Dark King's spiritual body by impaling him through three different locations and forcing his palm forward to block the being's mouth. It was impossible to think that a spirit could ever bleed, but ethereal drops of red liquid gushed out of the Dark King from the other side of his body the very moment that the tips puncture through his backside. Joe Dark is immediately frozen in place by a subconscious form of paralysis brought on by his deep connection to the Dark King's spirit.

As the Dark King stutters in place unable to talk or breath in the spiritual plane he floats in, 'D.' raises his left hand towards the front of his face and curls all but one claw inward so he can place the one that remains before his mouth and let out a chilling, delayed whisper that was directed as a hint of silence towards the Dark King. Returning to his natural grin, the demon says to his former master "Would you be so kind as to silence yourself, my 'lord'? Your successor needs to be able to answer this question for himself…" Speaking in a false tone of levity towards the Dark King, 'D.' proceeds to turn back towards Joe Dark as the boy regains his composure and asks in utter disbelief towards what he is witnessing "H-How are you doing this?!"

"Oh…Its quite simple really. I have and always shall be a spirit at the core of my being…Therefore, even when I possess flesh born individuals such as this false shell of an Elemental Overlord, I can still interact with the spiritual plane…By the way, did you know that when a spirit has a reason to still exist in the universe, they are kept tethered in place by a glowing core known to only a select few simply as the 'Purpose'? If you truly want to remove one of these spirits from the universe, all you have to do is destroy the core…I do believe you see where I am going with this, don't you?" 'D.' ends his sentence off by looking up into the frightened, quivering eyes of the Dark King, his smile widening further before he draws his left hand across the air in a slow, circular gesture while simultaneously saying "I suppose…You do."

'D.' stares into the panicked eye of Joe Dark and with a slurred, reassuring voice he says "Oh, don't worry…You will still have the Dark King's powers…For all the time that I will allow you to live, that is." The demon then looks back at the Dark King's frozen spirit, his eyes widened in ecstasy as he licks his fangs and says to his former master "I said long ago that if the Overlord failed to kill you that I would do the job for him…A pity that I was captured and sealed away before I was given the chance to do so. But this time there is no one who can interfere, no one can save you, no one who can stop me…The fates have decided my 'lord'…" 'D.' claws stiffen as his eyes widen ferociously and his grin becomes one of pure malice and he finishes his sentence off with a lustful exclamation of "I AM YOUR DEMISE!"

In the span of a glorious, violent three seconds, the claws of 'D.' press inward through the Dark King's spiritual body and dig deep down until it reaches the edge of the glowing core that represented the being's 'Purpose' and the sharpened sides of the claws break right through that ethereal core with the utmost of ease. The Dark King was in a desperate amount of pain that he could not hope to express given the seal on his mouth, which is rather unfortunate for the demon considering that now he would be forced to watch the spirit do nothing but squirm in place as his entire being was breaking apart at the seams, and in turn Joe Dark's paralysis became more deep rooted inside of his body to the point that he nearly felt his heart shut down in a beat. But the pain would not last for much longer, for within another instant, the 'Purpose' of the Dark King had been crushed cruelly into oblivion, and his spirit broke apart to become one with the winds that would carry his shattered soul towards the place of judgment where he would be laid to rest for the remainder of the universe's existence…

With his job now accomplished in a satisfactory matter, 'D.' let Joe Dark suffer in the silence of the moment brought on by the Dark King's sudden demise as he drew his claws back towards his body and stepped back a couple of feet across the asteroid without making a single sound. The boy of darkness had to take in everything that just happened to realize how much he truly just lost here today. He may have not liked how the Dark King was inhabiting his body, but in the end over these last few grueling months the shadow had been his only company…He had no one else left to care about him, speak to him, or even look give him anything more than an angered glance…He had become so detached from all forms of society in his pursuit of greater strength in hopes of killing Whiter that once he had lost the one person he could share any words with he didn't know exactly how to react to this newfound revelation…But he did no one thing for certain, and it was a cruel fate that would be dealt to him on this day. He had no means of protecting himself against the sadistic wrath of 'D.', so death was all but certain…And because the Dark King was taken care of beforehand, he would die alone…And no one would care.

With his body frozen stiff in agony by everything he had thought of, it took 'D.' two attempts to snap Joe Dark out of his fright and pay attention to what he had to say. "So then…I will ask again. Do you have what it takes to tame someone like me?" The demon spoke in the same tone he did before despite how differently the situation was now for the boy standing before him, and deep in his endless, sadistic mind 'D.' was patiently waiting for Joe Dark to say absolutely nothing for a brief span of time before he answered the prior question for him. With his arms slowly creaking out beside his body and his wings unfurling across the sky, the demon raises his body into the air and glares down condescendingly at the phantasmal beast as his eyes widen in joy and he proclaims quietly towards the boy "I would assume your silence means no…"

With his knuckles cracking as he folds his claws inward a slight inch, the eyes of 'D.' flare up in joy before he declares in raspy, demonic ecstasy "Then you shall be the first of trillions I plan to make suffer in this universe!" Without any further warning the demon unleashed the true ferocity his kinship was known for, with his body becoming a relentless hurricane of destruction and agony as he flies towards Joe Dark and begins tearing into his thickened, darkness empowered flesh with his jagged ethereal claws as if the boy's bestial form was composed of nothing more then the weak human skin he was born in. Joe Dark puts up absolutely no resistance against the demon, for there was no point to him doing so. Any damage that he could possibly do would mean nothing, and he was in no condition to fight back in the first place…Right now he was nothing more then the victim of a hopeless, violent onslaught.

"Writhe…Writhe…WRITHE!" 'D.' exclaims in prolonged, raspy ecstasy, for he enjoys his situation far too much for it to be considered natural anymore. The demon lunged across the battlefield like madman, his body appearing and reappearing across multiple locations above the asteroid as the plane of reality distorts constantly to try and conform to his rampage. Joe Dark's body becomes slowly covered in green, bloody gashes as 'D.' tries to dig deeper and deeper into the bestial form in order to reach the organic body resting deep inside. He knew naught how to cease while he was so engorged in the thrill of this carnage, and the insides of the body he possessed literally palpitated in ecstasy. It was a gruesome sight to behold, and not even 'D.' himself knew when he was going to let it all end. But as he tore into Joe Dark physically, he was busy trying to dig deeper into Mew's subconscious on the inside…

As of the current moment, the ethereal form of 'D.' had taken on a different shape inside of Mew's mind, with his body growing human-like arms and legs along with a more chiseled face, though he did in fact lack any eyes as of this moment. He sees the glowing core that represented the Light Reserve guarding the way into the deepest parts of Mew's subconscious, but its form had become fizzled and a few holes had appeared across the way due to it being weakened by the young Overlord's steadfast moment of rage towards Joe Dark. With a grin on his face, 'D.' looked ahead and was fully prepared to insert more of his being into the subconscious to increase his strength and further establish his grip on the boy's fragile mind. "All too easy…"

As he bathed in arrogance, 'D.' inched forward across the groundless expanse of Mew's mind, but it took only two seconds for a flash of light to appear before him and blind him for a prolonged expanse of time before a figure emerged from it. With his vision returning, 'D.' saw the person as the young Overlord himself, his body currently having the appearance of his Light Form as he stands firmly in the air with a undaunted glare in his eyes and his katana rested below both of his palms in front of the center of his body. And quickly, without warning or anything of the sorts, three barriers came crashing down behind Mew, each one composed of an equally thickened amount of light that feeds into the Light Reserve and slowly begins to heal it. 'D.' grits his fangs and stares puzzled at the figment of Mew's mind that stood before him.

"What madness is this?!" He snarls towards the being. Mew raises his eyebrows and says in firm defiance of the demon's madness "Do you think I would just let you take control of me like I'm some common puppet?!" "Well, that was the general plan…Yes." 'D.' says without a care expended towards the cliché'd words of the young Overlord. "Tough luck…You'll find that my mind is harder to penetrate then you'd expect it to be…" Mew then says with a scoff at the start of his sentence. "Is that so?" 'D.' takes the young Overlord's words as that of a challenge, and with his grin widening he looks towards the shimmering barriers and remarks with a gesture of his right hand "Its pretty easy to see how these barriers of yours work…Each one will break the moment you succumb to anger, much like you did before…And every time I break a barrier I will be able to control your body for longer periods of time before you regain control again…At least until the final barrier is broken, at which point there will be nothing you can do to stop me…Nothing ANYONE can do to stop me."

"Hmph…Such a pity that you believe it will be that simple. I won't be getting angry anytime soon knowing that you'll be in possession of my body whenever I fail to keep my cool…" In the face of Mew's stern boast, 'D.' merely creases his lips together and slowly lets out a chilling laugh from within before noting to the hero "Oh…Like I haven't heard that one before. Many a hero past, present and future make these stalwart vows under the foolish assumption that they will be able to keep them…But the universe does not conform to the desires of any singular person no matter how important they are. Hardships will come along to try your very patience, lives will be lost without you being capable of saving them, and monsters will do everything in their power to break you with nothing more than their words…And when all of this comes together inside of you, your anger will reach a boiling point and blind you with its madness to the point that you'll forget all about your inane little promise and bring me back into possession of your body…Its all inevitable, and I can sit here and enjoy every single waking moment until I get to have my fun again…"

Nearing the end of his triad, 'D.' crosses his arms and rests against them with his head, his smile widening as he looks on at the firmly standing Mew and is surprised to see that the young Overlord has not regressed on his bravery nor has he budged even an inch from his current stance. Naturally, this pleases the demon, who gesture his right hand outward and says to the boy "Of course…If push comes to shove and you do hold true to your boast, I always have an ace up my sleeve…" In a flash of light, a crystal clear orb with a slight bundle of neon fog inside appears above the right palm of 'D.' Mew's eyes flinch for a moment, for he didn't recognize the object nor could he recognize the contents buried inside.

"You see this orb? I happened to find it while scurrying around your mind undetected…It was buried deep away behind many easily broken locks and chains, but before it was released into your mind I containing it in this little orb for further use…And I must admit, upon delving into the memory fog I saw some very interesting tidbits inside that you would likely be dying to see for yourself…" The demon then closes his claws, crushing the orb so the contents go back into his body while he looks on and notices Mew raise his left eyebrow with his curiosity piqued by the object he just saw. "But alas…I'll just keep it held inside of my ethereal form until I feel it would be necessary to let you see what it is you had kept hidden away from you…For now though, you can have your body back…And live with the consequences and agony of what your anger has done…"

'D.' slips off into the distance, leaving Mew alone in his own mind for a few brief moments as the Light Reserve fully heals up and he feels this guardian figment of his mind fading away to become one with his consciousness. Mew wakes up in the physical world, his eyes widening in shock from the sudden shift between mind and reality. However, he doesn't have very long to grasp this shift, for as he looks straight ahead of him he sees Joe Dark's body limply grasped in his hands by the neck of his shirt. Mew's arms were splattered with blood that was drying off with each passing second, and he could feel a bit of liquid dripping across the sides of his face that was more than likely the viscera from Joe Dark's body. The young Overlord stood with mouth agape and his body trembling as he released his grip on the boy's body and let him fall to the ground without so much as a hint of life from any of his limbs.

Though that wasn't enough to say for certain that Joe Dark had been killed by 'D.' before he regained control of his body, the signs pointed greatly towards that gravest of truths. Mew nearly convulsed in disgust as he looked down at Joe Dark's body, and he knew he couldn't restrain his own mouth with his hands without feeling the taste of dried blood against his lips…His own body was used to violently tear apart the new Dark King, and that was something that he would have to carry with him for the rest of his life…Unable to figure out how to react to all the events that unfolded on this asteroid here today and his heart beating rapidly against his chest, Mew quickly turns around and flies off back into space to escape the scene of conflict and return back to his Earth upon realizing that he was too mentally unstable right now to try and help out other planets…He needed time to think, and that could only happen back home…

But as he disappeared from the view of asteroid, someone was slowly approaching it from above in a gigantic, cloaked spaceship. A second after stopping, a circular pod is lowered out of the bottom of the ship, its colors being that of a sleek onyx with a dark yellow glass window on the front so the occupant can see where he is going. Once on the asteroid itself, the door depressurizes from the rest of the pod and falls to the ground to create a small staircase for the being inside to climb down from. After pulling himself up from his seat, the man inside steps onto the asteroid and looks down at the battered body of Joe Dark, his eyes gazing deeply at the person's right hand and upon noticing a slight twitch from his pinky he realizes that the person is still alive, albeit only barely…

"Interesting…Could this boy possibly be…" The man mumbles to himself in an aged, gruff tone of voice before twiddling his fingers against his bearded chin and saying to the voice receiver attached to his right gauntlet "I appear to have found the new Dark King…I'm going to retrieve him and bring him back to our healing pods, so prepare the one closest to the docking bay pronto…" After receiving a understanding reply from his brigade, the man lowers his right hand down and extends his palm towards the body of Joe Dark. With a simple exertion of his mind, the boy is surrounded by a small black field and is slowly picked up off the ground as if gravity no longer mattered to him. He was taken back to the pod from which the man emerged and placed on the floor as the door closed shut and the pod itself returned to the ship from whence it came…

_Next Time: A New Elemental Overlord_


	8. Final Chapter

**Prologue Final Chapter: A New Man, A Similar Journey…**

It has been a few long months since the traumatic experience that shook Mew to his very core. Having returned to planet Earth to clean himself off and try and shake off the gruesome image of Joe Dark's devastated body being held in his own two hands, the young Overlord found that said thoughts would not escape his head so long as 'D.' was inside of him keeping those images flowing through his mind. The first few nights after his return to his home were restless, especially when his heart began to beat rapidly in fear of another possession. Mew's body would also become colder than the temperature actually was outside the confines of his house, and not even bundling himself up in all of his clothes broken this unnatural chill.

As he laid in his bed for a few hours during the first week since his return, he saw nothing but red blood on the ceiling above him, his eyes blurring to the point that he thought some drops of blood were going to drop down upon him, which in turn led to him re-adjusting his vision as his heart skipped a beat and a cold sweat trickled down his forehead. Mew realized soon enough that he would have to talk to someone about what he experienced in the depths of space, but the only reason he ended up hesitating on that idea is because he didn't want to give 'D.' a group of people close to him to torment on the off chance that he did manage to possess him again. This would have to be an ordeal that the young Overlord would have to face by himself not just for his sake but for that of everyone else's existences as well.

So after vowing to at the very least find a way to lessen the chances of him snapping and releasing 'D.' back into the world in a sudden moment of anger, Mew took up a new daily regimen after scanning the environment around his home in the mountains for safe, secluded places to relax and think. The first location he went to in the morning was a large cascading waterfall that he sat under after creating a stable rocky mass in the water below its flow that would be able to hold the length and width of his folded legs. He let the calming flow of water be the only noise that flushed into his ears as he sat completely still with his eyelids closed and his arms crossed on top of one another just a few inches in front of his waist.

He was positioned in such a way that the water had no chance of flowing over the front of his face, and he let the waterfall flow naturally because if he used his powers to divert it he would be weighing his mind down with rather unnecessary thoughts that would disrupt the calm he was trying to obtain. He needed to try and accomplish a perfect zen here, since if in the immediate future he ended up getting even the slightest bit angry he would have something tranquil to think back on to calm himself down and prevent 'D.' from taking over his body. The first few weeks started off rather well, but even as he sat still and tried to flush out all other sounds the demon's voice kept taunting him from within to make it all the more difficult to hold his concentration.

Thankfully, the young Overlord had other calming exercises up his sleeve besides sitting under the waterfall. After returning home and eating lunch, Mew went to the grasslands just outside of his house and began practicing tai-chi, which was the steady, calming process of him moving his arms and legs around in a rhythmic motion as he becomes one with the glory of nature around him. This process took longer to adapt to compared to the waterfall simply because the young Overlord had to memorize all the steps in conjunction with paying attention to where his feet were going after he began to move from his starting position. But the same problem arose from when he was under the waterfall, in that 'D.' would continue to taunt him at various points in time, doing everything in his confined space to get a rise out of the young Overlord even though the demon was positive that anger wouldn't be derived from his few comments.

There was one other idea that Mew had in mind, but this one was discarded rather quickly for reasons that shall be described shortly. Before dinnertime came around, the young Overlord would fly across the entire planet and examine the planet he lived on for what it was. The problem with this though didn't have anything to do with 'D.' taunting him or anything of the sort from the demon, but rather it was Mew's observation of such wicked misdeeds such as watching grime spill out into the ocean and bulldozers pushing down rainforest trees along with the brief sight of a shot corpse lying out in the open in the middle of a city that he was swiftly reminded of the evils his species was capable of performing. Mew stopped these flights only a few days after beginning them, but he now found himself caught up in the different line of thought that correlated with what he was doing currently.

The young Overlord was reminded of what he was originally planning to do out in the near endless depths of space, and how even with the demon inside of his subconscious he still desired to do something to help other worlds out. However, besides the obvious factor of 'D.' being inside of him, another thought had bonded to his current line of thinking thanks to his brief few trips around the planet. His home world was also plagued by crime, environmental destruction, and death…And he had the power to do something about it all. But this conflicted with his prior interests in going out into the universe, and Mew realized that no matter what option he chose 'D.' would be within his mind no matter what.

At the very least, if Mew stayed on Earth, he would always have the sanctity of his home to keep himself together, and it would be for the best if he kept up on his mental exercises even if the demon continued to taunt him…But that still left him with no solution to his other problem. He couldn't just ignore it, especially when he was briefly reminded of the fact that people like Joe Dark and 'D.' existed out there and more than likely the heroes of other worlds needed someone strong like him to protect themselves from harm. There had to be a solution to this situation, and as Mew sat one day in his house with his mind working overtime to try and figure something out he reached deep down into his memories and recalled an ability the Elemental Overlord had that he had long forgotten due to how useless it appeared to be at the time…

That very ability was the act of duplicating his own body to create someone who looked close to him in appearance at the cost of halving their strength. The clone could have all of Mew's memories if he so wished for that to be, he could have all of his features or new ones so long as they didn't undermine the natural growth of his human body. In other words, he couldn't change the clone's physique or create a female version of himself. Even at half strength, the young Overlord felt that his clone would be able to handle most of the evils out there, especially with Joe Dark dead…Shaking his head to quickly forget about the boy of darkness, Mew thought about one last thing before deciding whether he would create a clone of himself or not.

And that thought was whether or not a portion of 'D.' would transfer over into the clone. After all, this plan would be for naught if the new Elemental Overlord got angry and ended up becoming possessed by the second half of 'D.'. Of course, one had to take into consideration that the demon was a sentient phantasm that was completely separate from Mew's body for the time being. He was more of a parasite then anything else, so unless he could duplicate himself as well, there would be no reason to assume that he would be capable of bonding even a fragment of himself to the clone. With a nod of his head, the plan was settled…The young Overlord would clone himself and send him off into the universe to help out those in need while he stayed and dealt with Earth's problems and continued his exercises to hold his anger back.

After pushing himself off of his couch and heading out through the door, Mew stood in the center of the few trees in the vicinity of his house and slowly lifted his left hand into the air in front of him while closing his eyes and concentrating on a specific portion of air before exclaiming calmly "Uplink process to the data boundary engaged! Transmitting genetic structure and coordinates to replicative outline now!" Mew's palm gains a translucent, bright green glow and a grin outline of a similar color is slowly knit together until it forms the figure of the young Overlord's body, at which point Mew opens his eyelids and looks to see that his hand is placed against the chest of his creation.

For a moment, the young Overlord forgets all of his prior troubles and cracks a light smile while letting out a gentle laugh "Heh…I'm actually going to be bringing a life into this world…" The platonic joy that Mew felt welling up inside of himself was rather intoxicating to experience, but the young Overlord wasn't going to let it distract himself from his immediate goal. With a firm, serious arching of his eyebrows he said to himself "Ok…I want to make this right the first time, so what should I do…" With this inquiry providing the basis for his motivation, Mew decided upon the most obvious thing that he should do with this clone, and that was give him all of his memories save for the fact that 'D.' was inside of his subconscious. After all, the clone would more than likely stay on Earth if he knew what was going on. Second, Mew had to decide on what he wanted to change as far as hair and eyes went.

"Hmm…" After a brief moment of contemplation along with a brief glance up at the bits of hair sticking out in front of his forehead, Mew said to himself "Yeah, I definitely need to change the clone's hair color…Whenever he returns to Earth, I'd rather people not end up mistaking him for me…Even though it is associated with darkness, I'll give him black hair and…Umm, perhaps dark grey eyes would work out." There wasn't really much else to think about besides that in regards to appearance, so the young Overlord thought about the last thing…The clone's personality. Naturally, this was easy to decide on as well. He would make the clone start off as a nearly blank slate save for the fact that they would be aligned with justice, that way they would never be swayed to do evil…Hopefully.

Mew's hopes in this lied with the fact that his clone would learn from and create his own personality based on the experiences he goes through on his journey across the universe. "Alright…That should do it…" With his mind connected to the outline of the clone, the young Overlord transferred all of his ideas into the outline and when the process was done he moved his hand away from the chest and watched as a flaming blue ring materialized around the bottom of the clone's feet. It rises upwards, slowly but surely solidifying the clone into existence as Mew stepped back and watched in awe at the birth of this new life. Thankfully, just as the young Overlord was thinking about it, the clone was given clothes that perfectly matched the ones he was wearing, thus depriving the situation of any awkwardness that could have been brought on by nudity…

Eventually, with a flash of light acting as a prelude for it, the clone is fully created and the outline is destroyed. The person stands on the ground, appearing exactly as the young Overlord wanted him to be like, though with his eyelids closed and his hair waving about from the influx of air created by the finished cloning process. The clone stood in place, his body upright yet visibly conscious because of the bit of air coming through his nostrils. Mew was understandably overwhelming by the mirror visage of himself standing before him, especially since not very many people can say that they were able to create a new life that was a near replica of themselves. With a slight tear in his right eye and a smile on his face, Mew looked at the clone of himself and thought deep down "Wow, I can't believe how well this turned out…"

After a few moments of silence, the young Overlord slowly lifted his trembling right hand up and began to approach his clone, ready to touch him just to feel how realistic his clothing and skin felt against his own body. But as stood only a couple feet away from his clone's body, he was caught off-guard by him lifting his right hand up nice and slowly to lay his fingers between Mew's own, where he then wiggled them around to confirm his own creation. The young Overlord stood with mouth agape as he looked as his clone's face and witnessed him opening his dark grey eyes to take his first look at the world in front of him. Immediately seeing his creator standing in front of him, the clone noted his shocked expression and creaked his lips upward slightly to smile and say shyly to Mew "H-Hello there…"

With a natural, almost fatherly smile on his face, Mew welcomes his new clone into this world by saying to him with their hands still pressed together "Hey…How you feeling champ?" With his mind still a bit fizzy due to the fact that he was just born into this world, the clone let out a quiet chuckle and whispered to his creator "Umm…alive, I guess?" Mew figured that the reaction was normal, especially since the clone didn't have enough of a personality at the time to really work with. "Hehehe…Guess I can't expect you to be more expressive quite yet. Its alright, we can work on that a bit…Come with me back into my-Err, I guess it would be 'our' house now." Chuckling a bit at the fact that he would have to get used to the change in terminology around his clone, Mew pulled his hand away from that of his replica and gestured towards the house while turning his body partially sideways. It took a few moments for the clone to react as he pushed his lips together and looked forward with a blank glare, but after a reassuring word from his creator the new Overlord walked behind him and entered their house.

From there Mew sat in one couch while asking his clone to take a seat on the chair resting on the ground in front of him. The clone takes a few moments to innocently position himself on the seat of the chair, his hands planted against the arms while he wiggles his butt around to the point that it begins to squeak. Mew bore the pain of the squeaks simply because he understood his clone's immature desire to examine the things around him. Once the clone got comfortable, he folded his arms gently above his legs and smiled, before asking with a little more confidence "So…What's up? Who are you exactly?" The young Overlord smiled at his newly created clone and responded gleefully and honestly "My name is Mewmaster…Though you can call me Mew for short…Before I tell you what's up though, I have to ask you a question…Do you know who you are?"

With a raise of his eyes and a blink of his eyelids, the clone lifts his head diagonally and places one hand against his chin to try and recall just who he was. A name didn't pop to mind immediately, but his title did after a few more seconds of silent recollection "Umm…I'm an Elemental Overlord, a guardian of all who is good in the universe, right?" The sentence was a bit jumbled as far as grammar went, but Mew was at the very least glad to hear that he understood the type of person he was. "Alright, so I don't need to exposit on your power and stuff…So lets see here…" Thinking for a moment on how to approach things next, the young Overlord twiddled his fingers together in front of his chest and tilted his head upward.

"Ok, lemme explain to you what you are…You are a clone of me created by myself using the powers at my command. You have all of my memories up until this point because I didn't want to spend hours on end explaining my life story to you, but if you have any questions I'll try and answer them. Your appearance is slightly different from me because I didn't want to cause confusion in case you are around one of my friends when I'm not around to confirm things." After detailing a few things to his clone, Mew pushes his head forward and says to him "Before I continue, do you have anymore questions?" The clone nodded while trying to mimic the smile on his creator's face.

"Yeah, can you tell me what my name is?" Mew was surprised by how sudden this inquiry was…Or rather, he wasn't expecting the issue to be brought up so soon. He was kind of hoping that questions about his memories would be asked instead of one regarding his name. "Umm…" Caught in a bit of pickle because he hadn't really taken the time to consider a name for his clone, Mew bent his head forward and placed his hands against the sides of his face while tapping his fingers against his forehead to help with his thought process in regards to a name. "Hmmm…" It had to be something nice, something that would fit his…Oh wait, he didn't have a personality at the moment. His slate was as blank as the sky…

With that last sentence appearing in his mind, Mew's eyes widened in brilliance as he came up with a name right off the bat after thinking quickly about what he just brought to his own attention. Lifting his head up while brandishing his right hand in front of his body to snap his fingers soundly, Mew smiled and said to his clone "I got it! Your name can be Riku Mew!" After trying to make the full name come off as serious as he possibly could muster, there was an awkward silence between the two Overlords before Riku developed a new personality trait and lifted his right eyebrow while saying with slight snark in his voice "You serious on that?" The inquiry held no disdain really, but the clone found it a bit silly that his creator would give him a name that, according to his memories, belongs to a character from a video game series.

Shocked yet slightly annoyed by the fact that the first personality trait that his clone would develop was a liking towards sarcasm, Mew pulled his right hand behind his head and nervously rubbed it while saying in an apologetic tone after misinterpreting the response "Yeah, I guess that was a bit silly of me, eh?" "Hey hey hey, don't beat yourself up about that." The clone said in a rapid, caring tone of voice to try and lift his creator's spirits. Mew bent his head down and removed his head from the back of his head while keeping a stern look in his eyes as he watched his clone place one hand against his chest and says in a complementing tone of voice "I really don't mind the name, I just had to crack a joke at it, that's all."

"Oh thank god…" Mew said with a sigh of relief since he was glad that his clone wasn't going to become defiant right off the bat. "Alright then Riku, now that we've gotten your name out of the way-" "One more question." Riku interrupted politely while raising his right pointer finger beside his face with a blank expression on his face. Though the young Overlord was a bit peeved as his eyebrow raised lowered face showed, he lifted his head back up with a smile and honored his clone's desire for knowledge with a calm "Go right ahead." With a gesture of his right hand as he creaked his lips into a gentle smile, Riku asked his creator "What am I supposed to call you? My creator, my master, or something else entirely?"

That wasn't a very hard question to answer, which Mew was glad on considering how much he wracked his mind to try and solve the prior one. "I don't like the idea of you degrading yourself by calling me creator or master, so considering how you look and the fact that I'd prefer we be seen as equals despite your current naivety…How about you be my brother? I always kind of wanted a brother anyways." Riku smiled as Mew offered to be his brother, and with an enthusiastic nod of his head the new Overlord said in response "Alright brother, then that's what I will call you from here on out!" Riku then silenced himself and laid his arms against the arms of the chair, and from the looks of things it appeared as though his mind had adjusted to his existence since he no longer had the innocent, curious gleam in his eyes that he did before.

After sitting still and waiting to see if anymore questions would pop out of his clone's mouth, Mew finally went back to his original line of thought and with a calming breath he said "Alright, so here's the thing…And I know this is sudden and all, but there's something I want you to do for me." For the next few minutes, Mew explained to his clone about his desire to have him go out into the universe and protect those who need protecting on other worlds. Riku sat patiently and listened to everyone his brother had to say, his head only nodding on occasion to reassure him that he was able to follow along and understand. At the end of it all, Mew asked Riku "So what do you think? You up for it?"

"Yeah, of course I am." Riku responded swiftly, which was both concerning yet unsurprising on Mew's end, even though a part of him DID kind of hope that his clone would be eager to go out into the universe. Still, to be on the safe side, the young Overlord asked his new brother "You don't have any concerns?" "Of course not…Though I do have something I wish to ask. Why don't you go out into the universe yourself?" Riku wasn't being a jerk by asking that, he was just rather curious about the matter and hoped that his brother would enlighten him on his train of thought. "Simply put Riku…" Mew says after folding his hands in front of his mouth and letting out a tender sigh.

"I have to be the one to defend the Earth from harm. Its not a matter of trust between you and me, I believe you have the capability to do great things as far as help goes on this planet, but the thing is that you look just like me save for the hair and eyes…I hate to bring personal reputation into my argument, but despite my powers people still trust me…If they find out that I can clone myself, they might be led to believe by the more paranoid governments that I am a dangerous man that can amass an army any time I wanted to take over the planet…And I'd hate for you to be catalyst that starts this event considering how you've just been brought into this world. Do you see what I'm getting at here Riku?"

Mew hated how badly he was lying to his brother, even more so considering that Riku likely didn't have any deduction skills yet considering how its only been a good thirty minutes since he was created. The young Overlord's reaction to his brother saying "Yeah, I figured that was the case…" was one of calm neutrality as he pulled his hands away from his face and said in response to that "Good, that's what I was hoping for…But I'm glad I clarified it for you anyways." "Though before I head off…" Riku makes a gesture towards his clothing and pulls on the front of his shirt with his left hand while looking up with a rather innocent grin on his face "Can I perhaps get some different clothes on? I mean, with what you pointed out there I'd hate for-"

Mew waved his hands back and forth in the face of Riku's sudden descent into guilt and said to him "No no no, I wouldn't dare force you to go into the universe wearing the same clothes I have. Go into my room and change into something different…Pick something good though, you won't exactly get any chances to put on new clothing once you head out into the universe…" That was an understatement of the century right there, but Riku loomed on the issue for only a moment before nodding his head and politely making his way towards Mew's room. The young Overlord then decided to lay back against the couch and think about what he was going to do once Riku left…For all of one minute, since that's all the time it took for his brother to walk back out into the living room with his new wardrobe.

Riku was now adorned with a red t-shirt with black flames painted on the front of it, making the shirt a polar opposite of the one Mew has on right now. He has put on brown jeans that have a rather rugged appearance to them that makes them appear better suited for mountain climbing then they would for casual wear. Riku also has on his feet some white cotton socks and black tennis shoes that don't clash at all with the bottom of his pant legs. But the most important difference between Mew's wardrobe and Riku's was that Riku put on a black silk sleeveless vest that was split down the center enough that the two sides on the front were only as wide as the shoulders they needed to support themselves on.

With a fairly impressed whistle from between his lips, Mew thrust the upper half of his body straight up and said to his brother "Snazzy choice of clothes. I really like the vest you chose to wear especially." "Really? I kind of had a hard time choosing a shirt because in all honesty…You have nothing but shirts with flame insignias on them. You might want to consider getting a more varied selection in your closet, brother…" After Riku makes his little remark Mew flips his body around so his feet are between the couch and the table and says "Hey if it ain't broke don't fix it…People on Earth like and recognize the flame insignia." Mew then gets on his feet and turns towards his brother, walking forward and placing his left arm over his shoulders to get him in close while the two of them walked towards the front door.

"Look Riku…If you have even the slightest doubts in yourself, you can always stay around for a bit and then go out into the universe. I'm not forcing you to go into space all by yourself, after all…" Mew opened the front door after removing his arm from Riku's body, and as the new Overlord smiled and walked behind his brother to head into the sunny outdoors he responded truthfully with "I'll be alright. I don't doubt myself because you don't doubt me…I know you are just a bit concerned for my safety because that's what good brothers do, but don't worry too much about it…I'll be fine." Riku stops as Mew and him reach the center of the grass between the house and the mountains, and the young Overlord turns himself around and places both of his hands on his brother's shoulders to say to him "No, you're right…I do have faith in you, I am concerned for your safety…"

"But know this Riku…If things get too dangerous for you out there, you'll always have a place to come back to." With a raise of his right hand, Mew taps the front of Riku's forehead and a slight gleam pops out of it. Blinking his eyelids a couple of times, the new Overlord asks "What was that about?" "I gave us a slight mental connection…With it you'll know where I am at all times just in case you end up getting lost and need to find your way back to somewhere safe." Widening his eyes innocently to show an understanding towards what his brother was saying, Riku then nodded his head and with a chuckle he said "Heh, thanks Mew."

Knowing full well that his brother was ready to go, Mew let go of Riku's shoulders and calmly took a couple of steps back to give him enough space to take off. With a reminder from his brother's memories that he needed to create a veil of air, Riku made sure to do so with a thought before he kicked himself off the ground and gave Mew a quick wave of his right hand as a send-off. With the young Overlord replying with a similar if slower gesture, he watched as Riku turned around and rocketed off towards space, leaving him with only a single voice inside of his head as he saw his brother's figure grow smaller with each passing second. _"Hehehe…So its just you and me now on this planet…And soon enough, it will be a planet of fire and corpses…"_

"Think that all you want demon…But there is another reason that I created a clone of myself…" As Mew lowered his head and his expression grew serious, he walked back towards his house and continued to say to 'D.' "If all else fails and I don't manage to contain you, then Riku will hopefully get strong enough to come find my possessed body and kill it before you go too far with your rampage…But I'll definitely make sure he isn't forced to make such a decision. You'll see eventually monster, your taunts can only so much to break me…" As Mew combated the demon with nothing more than his words, high above the skies and atmosphere the one called Riku Mew broke through the Earth's gravitational pull and shot off into the mighty depths of space, in his mind knowing full well that he had a great mission to accomplish and a long, long distance to cover before he may find any other planets to help out…But he would persist, so long as he believed in the faith that his brother had in him…

**Part 4 Prologue:**

**THE END…**

_To be continued in "Clash of the Elements Part 4: The Ocarina of Time"…_

* * *

**Author's Notes:  
**

Well at long last the prologue for Part 4 is done and over with...And yes only half of a story put into the Sonic fan fic section had anything to do with Sonic, but I wasn't going to put half of the story on here and the other half on FictionPress. Either way, as you can imagine from that last line if you are familiar with the series, the next part of the story will be posted in the "Legend of Zelda" FanFic part of the site, so check up there later on or keep following my posts to see when it will be up.

Right now though, I'm going to be taking a bit of a detour to deal with a few other stories. There's the matter of Part 3's what-if, for one. Then I've decided I'm going to do one of the "Tales of Plit" stories every time I finish a segment of Part 4, which means I have to do three chapters of that. And for anyone who has followed along up until this point, that means if you care at all for character driven stories based off the important Mario characters from the first three Parts of Clash of the Elements, you'll have to go to the "Super Mario Bros." part of the site.

And after that I have two side stories that are going to be attached to the End of Part 3 and this story. Not gonna give names or spoil what they are about, but they are actually important for the main story, so please keep an eye out for them. Oh yeah, this particular story isn't going to have a what-if at all, surprise, surprise...But every other story in Part 4 will, but I will only go back and deal with them after the next story has been completed. So yeah, that's my plan for the next couple of weeks...Deal with Part 3's What-Ifs, write up two stories whose purposes are secret, and write up the first story for "Tales of Plit" which will more than likely be Driad's tale. So keep following along and enjoy!


	9. The One Who Calls Forth Chaos

"_T-There's no way that it will end like this!" Shadic declares in his stuttering mind as he looks deep inside and remembers the people that are hoping for his victory, from his friends on the island to those standing down below, and that along with the final hopeful cries of everyone on the planet allowed Shadic to regain his full strength for just a brief moment and push his entire body forward._

_And that brief moment would prove to be all that he would need, as the Super Emeralds and Master Emeralds expend an exceptional amount of energy to help fuel their savior beyond his previous limits, Shadic thrusts both of his palms against the tail end of his beam and pours every single bit of power he has into enlarging his beam three-fold, thus making it large enough for it to be able to push against the demonic orb and send it back towards its creator without either the phantasmal hands on the beast itself being able to do anything to stop this new inevitability. Joe Dark's singular eye widens in shock and fear as he sees his creation heading his way swiftly with a golden pulsating beam trailing it from behind. "No…NO NO NO! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING, YOU SHOULDN'T BE CAPABLE OF SUCH-" _

Joe Dark, the new Dark King who as of now was maintaining a bestial phantasmal form as he engages in a struggle of energy between himself and the fusion of Sonic and Shadow known as Shadic, is currently finding out just how wrong it was for him to underestimate the power of the Chaos Emeralds just because he was unable to draw out the negative energy that should have been inside. With a little help from his resolve and the cheers of his friends, Shadic managed to overwhelm Joe Dark's dark energy with his ultimate attack, the "Billion Ring Chaos Wind". With his hellish sphere forced back through the atmosphere and heading towards him rapidly, the boy of darkness understandably panicked for his life because he didn't believe that he was going to survive the impact.

"You have no one to blame but yourself for this…" The spirit of the original Dark King says in a sly, taunting manner to the wide-eyed Joe Dark as the sphere gets ever closer to his bestial form. The boy of darkness rears his head back and with his mouth still agape from the prior attack he quickly tries to gather up enough energy to launch at the edge of the sphere in such a way that the recoil would launch him away from the path of his own attack. The Dark King laughs at such futility, unaware that with one condensed sphere of darkness roughly the size of his head, Joe Dark creates a burst powerful enough to accomplish his goal…To a certain extent, that is. Though he doesn't take the full force of the sphere's might as he is thrust downward through the weightlessness of space, he is struck by the bottom edge of the sphere and feels the pain of his own energy coursing through his body for a grand total of five seconds.

With a widened, stiffened eye and crimson electricity pulsating across his skin, Joe Dark's bestial form is blown away, the energies forced back into his human body as the sphere itself slowly breaks apart and spreads out in such a way that it swarms and pushes against the boy's skin and sends him hurtling towards the closest celestial object with a gravitational pull, the moon. Moving towards the moon back first at a rather prolonged rate, Joe Dark finds himself too battered to regain his flight for even a second to break his descent. "…You know, I'm really starting to regret not listening to you…" With the pain he was in, Joe Dark had no energy nor motivation to be angry anymore even after his brutal defeat at the hands of the hedgehog he mocked.

"Ha…At least you'll actually get a chance to take your own advice into consideration, surprisingly." The Dark King, somewhat glad to see his host body alive, turns his spiritual body to face the surface of the moon that was quickly approaching before saying to Joe Dark "Of course, that's assuming you ever get up from this impact…" After ten more seconds, the boy of darkness crashes against the dusty ground, his body making an inch deep crater that perfectly conformed to his figure while cracks spread out across the edges. Joe Dark's eyelids blinked involuntarily while his arms and legs became numb with pain, and after the ringing in his head has come to an end the boy of darkness looks forward to see the Earth staring at him almost mockingly from afar in the midst of the starry depths of space. With a breath in through his nostrils, Joe Dark lets out a melancholy sigh of displeasure at his current predicament.

"…That's it, I've had it with this." Joe Dark whispers out in subtle anger. He tries to pull his right arm out of the moon's surface, but as he grunts and seals his eyelids in conjunction with his pulls he finds that he lacks the strength necessary to accomplish his task and his arm only budges a millimeter. "Grrr…" The boy of darkness growls at his inability to free himself from the moon, but he only does so for three seconds before letting out another sigh and staring straight forward in order to get lost in his own thoughts. "Is something the matter?" The Dark King's spirit asks as he floats above and around his host body. Joe Dark blinks once and glares at the spirit, for he knows that the spirit truly knew what was on his mind and was only asking the question to be a nuisance since he couldn't be prevented from doing so.

"…I don't care anymore about my goal…" Joe Dark mumbles out. "I beg your pardon?" The Dark King inquires mockingly. "Look at what just happened to me…I was defeated by a hedgehog, a goddamn furry mammal of all things! …I don't know how I can bother to try and go after Whiter knowing that I will never be able to undo the indignity of this defeat…" "…Hehehe, is that so?" The Dark King listens to Joe Dark as he broods about his defeat, finding his change in behavior rather curious considering all that he had seen him do before. "You've been beaten many times before, and only now are you going to let it affect you? What's REALLY going on inside that head of yours, child?" Sensing something more deeply amiss with his host body, the deep-toned spirit hovers closer to Joe Dark's face and grins creepily as he awaits an answer.

"…You know what most of my defeats have in common? The heroes are usually saved by some factor that I had no way of knowing about before hand…From those stupid followers of the Elemental Overlord giving Whiter a power boost via their 'souls' to the populace of Plit rejuvenating him with their pitiful hopes and dreams, and finally to those two hedgehogs fusing their powers via that 'Chaos Control' technique of theirs…In the face of all these instances along with my death, its made me realize a rather grave truth…Fate favors the 'heroes', and so long as Whiter is deemed to be on their side he will always either be rescued by a stronger force or given a power boost that will allow him to surpass me time and time again…Your promises of power mean nothing, Dark King, and that's the reality of it all…"

Joe Dark lays back against the moon's surface, preferring the cold, dusty rocks rubbing up against his skin to having to return to the depths of space without so much as a reason to go anywhere. He moves his eyes to the right with his vision still somewhat blurred, and catches a glimpse of a figure that appears to have Whiter's face and body. "…Hmph, how sad. I'm so battered that I'm hallucinating, and who else would I be imagining mocking me with his presence but that accursed Whiter…" The Dark King flinches slightly when Joe Dark mentions this. After all, with his connection to the boy's mind and spirit, he would know exactly when his host would be having a hallucination, and as of now he wasn't. So with curiosity striking his mind, the shadow turned himself around and saw the person that Joe Dark had noticed through his blurred vision.

It was a being that looked very similar to the new Elemental Overlord and in turn the bane of Joe Dark's prolonged existence, Alex Whiter. The person had a grey shirt, black hair and pants, pure white shoes, a black right eye and a white left eye while his skin maintained a pale-ish hue. The child had no aura so to speak, he didn't carry an expression on his face nor was the Dark King able to sense any hidden emotions because of how blank the look in the child's eyes were. There was only a few things the spirit noticed on the being, and those were the scent of one of his familiars, the energy of his antithesis the original Elemental Overlord, and what appeared to be a bit of his own essence. "I wouldn't be worrying about hallucinations at the moment…" The Dark King snarls out as the being raises his right hand into the air coldly and charges darkness into his palm, appearing ready to annihilate the boy of darkness that laid helplessly on the ground in front of him…

Joe Dark's vision becomes a little more clear as he turns his head towards the being, and with a lifeless look in his eyes the boy of darkness said to him "…So in the end you were the one who found me, Whiter…" Looking away from the person he incorrectly labeled as his arch foe, Joe Dark stares at the clean planet Earth and says to the being "…If you are going to do it, then do it quickly…I don't want to suffer like I did the last time, especially not by your hand…" Laying limp against the ground with an accepting look on his face and his senses towards darkness inhibited enough that he can't tell just what type of energy is being charged in the palm of the being beside him, Joe Dark waits for his death openly, which greatly confuses the dark replica of Whiter. The child's expression doesn't change at all, but his energy charge becomes slower as a little hesitation can be visibly seen in his twitching right hand.

The being had no idea as to why his hand was moving, signifying that the action was involuntary, though he figured it had something to do with the condition Joe Dark was in alongside the fact that he seemed so accepting of his demise. But the human was a sinful creature, so he should be destroyed no matter the condition he is in, right? The dark replica of Whiter actually found himself questioning his motives here for a moment, as he raised his eyebrows a centimeter and his darkness' killing intent fizzled out slowly until it was stuck in a pure, harmless state of existence. With yet another defiance of the mission ingrained into his mind by his "mother", the being took the darkness in his palm that and thrust it out into Joe Dark's body, manipulating it in such a way that instead of harming it would tend to the boy's wounds at a rather slow yet workable pace.

Joe Dark's vision swiftly became clearer as he was surprised to find that his energy was slowly returning bit by bit, his skin taking in the darkness from the Whiter look-a-like's "attack" and adding it to his own to bring him back to his original level of strength. "W-What? Since when can Whiter use dark-" Finding something rather contradictory in how the being beside him was acting, Joe Dark took his rejuvenated body that was seeping out a misty purple darkness for a couple of seconds and lifted the upper portion up so he could turn his head and get a better look at the person beside him. After flinching from the brief throbbing in his head, the boy of darkness took a steady glimpse at the dark replica of Whiter and instantly noticed the differences between him and the real deal. Naturally, this brought a lot more questions to mind than answers, and with how silent the dark child was being Joe Dark suspected he wasn't going to figure much out unless he inquired the being on his own.

The Dark King, who had also been rather silent for a bit of time, moves his spiritual body back beside Joe Dark's figure as he pulls himself out of his body shaped crater and stands on his feet once more. The boy of darkness looks at the expressionless child and finds it weird that he has to bend his head down to look at him, even if it was only a couple of inches. The monochrome child was as tall as Whiter and he were when they fought a long while ago, meaning that he was created likely not very long after he had died in battle…But this simply meant that he wasn't capable of aging. After a few moments of the two staring blankly at each other, Joe Dark recalls something the Dark King mentioned to him immediately after his revival, and his eyebrows arch as he not only remembers that info but also recognizes the stench of a certain witch coming from the dark child's aura.

"…This child reeks of Cackletta's meddling…" Joe Dark whispered inside the confines of his mind so the Dark King would be the only one to hear him. "That he does…But I do find it most curious that he is here before us, especially since like yourself, this child died at the hands of the Elemental Overlord." After the Dark King makes his remark towards the dark child, Joe Dark speaks to him in an inquiring tone in hopes of getting a response "Child, my sources are telling me that you died once before…Who or what brought you back to life?" After flinching at the sudden influx of noise from the boy of darkness, the dark replica of Whiter slowly lifts his right hand up and points it at Joe Dark's chest without saying a word.

"…" The boy of darkness had nary a clue as to how to react to that gesture at first, until some light thinking with his arms crossed between his chest and gut allowed him to interpret the dark child's gesture. "I see…So my revival brought you back to from death as well, didn't it?" The replica of Whiter draws his arm back and nods his head, bringing about the first of many answers to Joe Dark's questions. "How exactly is that possible?" The boy asked his spiritual guide, who was busy floating across the ethereal realm to get a closer look at the being that had been fashioned by one of his followers to seemingly take his and the Elemental Overlord's places in the universe. "If anything, it was more than likely because of residual energy from your revival that this child picked up and used to rebuild his body…"

"…So this dark copy of Whiter has not a single bit of flesh within him?" Joe Dark inquires while tapping his left fingers against his chin, since the Dark King's comment brought that question to mind. "No…He is a hollow puppet of Cackletta, through and through." As the Dark King finishes circling around the dark child's body, Joe Dark notices briefly as his right fist tenses up slightly in anger. It wasn't much, but it was enough for the boy of darkness to realize that Whiter's dark replica could hear the Dark King speak. "…You knew Cackletta, didn't you?" Joe Dark asked the dark child after glaring at the spirit to get him to come back to him. The dark replica of Whiter nodded his head again, but this time he spoke in an emotionless tone that was almost exactly like that of the original "S-She was my mother…"

The verb tense in that sentence signified to Joe Dark that the witch Cackletta had finally perished, more than likely by Whiter's hand as well. There was no real reaction beyond the slight raising and lowering of his eyelids, since Joe Dark didn't really have any fond memories of the witch and actually considered it a good deed that Whiter did for finishing her off. But still, the dark child seems to have a type of attachment towards her, hence why he showed a bit of anger in his muscle movements, so Joe Dark decided not to speak ill of her directly to his face. Besides, he understood what its like to lose a mother. So for now, the boy of darkness decided to go on to another subject. "Child, what is your name?"

The dark child became frozen stiff with slight puzzlement on his face as he tried to recall his real name. He looked deep down through all of his memories, trying his hardest to scrounge up anything that would resemble even a semblance of a name, but much to his annoyance he couldn't find even a hint of a name inside his mind. Thankfully, Joe Dark catches on to this rather quickly because of how long it was taking the child to respond to him. "So you don't have a name?" He asks, which causes the dark child to lift his head up and shake it slowly back and forth. "Hmm…That's rather curious, I would have assumed that you would have shared Whiter's name."

The dark replica once again tightened his right fist, though this time he applied more pressure to the point that his knuckles cracked, while his body tried its hardest to suppress the child's emotions as his lips curled into a scowl. "Don't ever call me by my evil self's name…" Once again, Joe Dark's interest was piqued in this child, since he too thought of Whiter as "evil", though he did have to wonder why the replica did hold disdain towards the Elemental Overlord, especially since Cackletta obviously put a lot of effort into molding this puppet for her purposes. "Forgive me for the comment then." He first says in a quiet, apologetic tone to ease the tension the dark child held towards him at the moment. With a smile on his face, Joe Dark held his arms beside his hips and watched as the replica defrosted and looked at him blankly once more.

"Tell me, why do you hate Whiter?" Joe Dark then asked. The dark child, after taking a few moments to recall his goals, said to the boy of darkness "I hate 'evil' me because he has caused everyone in the universe to turn against the resistance set up by my mother, and sent his vilest guards to our home in order to have her killed before my eyes as I had just finished recovering in her pod…But with her dying breath, she gave me one final task…I am too kill off everyone in the universe because of how sinful they have become in order to believe evil me's false order…I don't believe that anyone in the universe is good anymore besides me." With his entire motivation laid out in a monotone voice, the dark child glances away from Joe Dark for a moment as the boy of darkness finds himself feeling rather disturbed by what Cackletta had done to this replica's mind in order to turn him into an emotionless homicidal puppet.

Sure, he could understand where the hatred of Whiter was derived from if it was true that he had sent the heroes of Plit to deal with the witch, but to go as far as to target the rest of the beings in the universe? That was going way, WAY too far. Sure Joe Dark may have tried to kill a few good people in the past, but that was only because they were foolishly defending his hated enemy Whiter, otherwise he would never have directed any malice towards them. Hell, the fact that he can admit that provides enough proof that the dark replica's goal was contradictory in of itself. However, there was another reason that the dark child's long-term plan made little sense, and as Joe Dark grinned his mind was brewing with ideas on how to perhaps use that second bit of logic against this replica.

"So if you wish to exterminate all the sinful beings in this universe, then why did you let me live?" This was a piercing question formulated in order to force the dark child to stop and think about his prior actions, and seeing as the child flinched momentarily upon hearing the question through all the way Joe Dark could tell that his inquiry was having a bit of an effect on the dark child's psyche. "What are you planning to do exactly, child?" The Dark King's spirit decides to ask after a prolonged period of silence. "If I can get this replica to perhaps forget about his 'mother's' command to kill all life, then I'll have a valuable ally to help me deal with Whiter…If not, then I have a way of keeping him from doing anything for a while…It all depends on his response."

After a few seconds of frozen stiff consideration, the dark child shrugged his shoulders and sheepishly said to Joe Dark "I-I don't know…" It was an honest reply, which makes sense only to him considering how he didn't even have a peg on his thoughts during the moment where he saved Joe Dark's life instead of killing him. Moving his hands away from his face with a slight grin brimming across it, the boy of darkness notes to the dark replica "Then perhaps you should think about it a bit longer…" With his eyelids sinking down slightly and his head pulled back to express pity towards the dark child "Or are you incapable of thinking for yourself?" The replica widened his eyes momentarily, fighting against his own mind as it tried to suppress his attempts at free will to little avail as he says to Joe Dark while his head begins to throb in pain "O-O-Of course I can!"

"Then prove it to me…I'm giving you one year to figure out an answer to my question. I don't want you to move away from this spot until you do, and when you finally leave you can seek me out by tracking my specific darkness signature and tell me your answer…And I'll know if you move from this spot, child." The dark replica of Whiter listened to Joe Dark's command and when it was through he nodded his head and stiffened his body to begin thinking as hard as he could to try and figure out the answer to the boy of darkness' question. Pleased with his results, Joe Dark turned around and with one last glance of his head over his shoulders he flies off of the moon and heads out into space with a grin still on his face.

The Dark King's curiosity was piqued by his host body's sudden change in behavior, and with an intrigued tone he asks "So what are you up to now, child?" "Whiter's dark clone made me realize two things…One, I can't allow myself to die so long as Whiter's mocking glare still haunts me…And two, that while those seen as heroes will always have their power-ups and last minute saviors…So long as I'm deemed a villain by the universe, I will always be revived to get in the 'hero's' way…But heroes, they only get to live one life, and once they lose that they will never be seen again. No matter how many times it takes, no matter how much pain I have to endure in order to live again…All I have to do is find a way to kill Whiter once, and then I will be at peace…"

With Joe Dark tightened his fists in determination, he calls forth a thick aura of darkness around his body and flies off through the cold depths of space all on his own, leaving behind the dark replica of Whiter to think about the question given to him for a year's time…He would not get in contact with any other beings during this time, he wouldn't eat, sleep or breath because he didn't need to do any of that due to his body composition. All he did was stand there on the moon's surface and think…And in time, perhaps he would find out the answer to the question posed by Joe Dark…But for now, he was fighting the suppression of free will inside of him with all of his might, and to the surprise and concern of those who observed him…He was winning.

_To be continued…_


End file.
